Tower, Tower
by Bainaku
Summary: When a mysterious assassin threatens to kill off all the royalty in Ooo, Princess Bubblegum calls upon the services of a legendary knight to protect her kingdom.  AU.
1. Prologue

**A/N**: This is an **AU multi-chaptered medieval-ish story.** Each chapter will be 1,000 words exactly unless the author's notes state otherwise, and I'll try to update it every day.

Written for Bekuh on Tumblr. =)

* * *

**TOWER, TOWER – [Prologue]**

* * *

Princess Bubblegum of the Candy Kingdom is a restless child. To put her to sleep at night, her servants read her stories.

Oh, stories: from the pages of a great golden leatherbound book they come, tales of pirates on seas broader than imagination, driving their ships full of treasure across foaming waves. There are sagas in the book too of thieves with good hearts—chronicles of stolen children and their faerie folk kidnappers, yarns about little girls who hear other worlds in the furls of seashells. There are fables, warnings against pride, vanity, power: there are stereotypes, evil stepmothers and ghastly witches, poisoned apples and sleep-forever spindles. There are cursed princes, talking teapots, wholesome maidens. There are other princesses, wusses who—in Bubblegum's tender young opinion, anyway—need to grow some freaking buns and brains already.

Of all the stories, though, there is one in particular she asks to hear almost every evening.

"Tell me again about Marceline," she insists, digging her cheek into her pillow. "Please, Peppermint?"

Her butler feigns a surprised gasp. "Really? Yet again?"

"Yet _again_," she reinforces, plucking off her tiara and kneading her toes in her bedsheets. "Marceline! Marceline!"

As he has done countless times before this one and will do countless times after too, Peppermint Butler cracks open the book. Running his thumb down its worn pages, he finds a crease most familiar. He clears his throat—looks sternly at the fidgeting princess. Only when she has calmed does he begin to read.

Marceline: a fierce child—"Much like you," Peppermint Butler always insists, and Bubblegum giggles—who grew into a fierce woman in a kingdom distant by both land and time. "It was a place of darkness," her servant relays, "but that doesn't mean it was _dark_-dark, no. There were shadows but stars to go with them, bright and winking—and moonshine, and everything was silver for it."

"Like spoons," Bubblegum opines.

"Like spoons _and _forks," Peppermint Butler affirms.

Marceline: a fierce woman in a kingdom distant by both land and time, yes, who fought to protect the crown. "The king was her friend, you see," says Peppermint Butler, "and she did everything for him she could, because running a realm is not easy, and he was often in danger, and she wanted to help him."

"Like you help me!"

"In a way, yes. But I am your servant—she was his knight. I bring you breakfast." Peppermint Butler lowers his voice to a hushed whisper and conspires, "She brought _him _the heads of _dragons_!"

"_Cool_!"

Marceline, true, brought her king the heads of dragons: the hearts of enemies, sometimes still warm and beating. She made him laugh the loudest of anyone, and prowled the kingdom's borders for him, and guarded him, and when there was war she stood unwavering by his side. Foes quailed at the sight of her, his ferocious champion. For a glimpse of her eyes red as apples, of her teeth sharp as blades, invariably meant death.

"And she would have defended him forever." Bubblegum's butler holds up a finger: taps it to the round of his temple. "But something happened to him that she could not fight."

"What?" asks the princess, despite that she knows already.

"His mind bruised. Blotched. Spoiled, like a fruit. It was no one's fault, not really, but it happened and he became not like the king he had once been. He did terrible things—worse, asked _Marceline _to do terrible things."

"And did she listen?"

No. Per the story, Marceline refused. "She tried to remain his friend, however. As he fell to ruin, she remembered him as he had been before. She cared for him. She protected him from assassins—even saw to it that he took his meals. And she would have done so forever, but…"

Eyelids drooping, head nodding low, Bubblegum presses, "_But_?"

"But he ordered people hurt as though it would soothe his own suffering"—and her servant shakes his head—"and Marceline could not allow that."

"So what did she do?"

Knocking the book closed on his knees, Peppermint Butler frowns. "No one is sure she did anything," he admits. "But one night the king was found dead—indeed, murdered—and Marceline was gone too. Some suspected she abandoned him to an assassin's blade. Still more thought she had killed him herself, hoping to save the kingdom the madness of his crown."

"Why did she leave?" Bubblegum demands sleepily. "Why didn't she just stay and take the crown herself? Become the queen? She was a good person, wasn't she?"

"A very good person, but ah, good people don't always stay good, do they? Perhaps she was afraid she would fail as her king had. Or perhaps she thought her realm was better off without a ruler, for tradition in her land stated that whosoever killed the king inherited his throne… and with the king mysteriously dead and no murderer at hand, the crown belonged to no one."

Bubblegum is struggling to keep her eyes open. "So"—she muffles a yawn against her knuckles—"what happened? To the kingdom? To Marceline?"

"The kingdom is still waiting for its monarch. And Marceline, well—they say she's still out there somewhere too, untouched by time. Looking for something or someone to protect again."

"Un… untouched by t… time?"

"Forever." Leaning to put the book away, Peppermint Butler pulls the coverlet up over Bubblegum, drowsing now, and finishes, "Goodnight, Princess."

Princess Bubblegum of the Candy Kingdom is a restless child—for a while. Eventually she grows into a teenager who, burdened by responsibilities, by duty, by a crown of her own, falls to sleep without the stories on her shelf. Years pass and she forgets the pirates with their treasure: the thieves and their nevertheless good hearts, the cursed princes and the spindles and the mad kings. She forgets the knights with eyes red as apples, with teeth sharp as blades. Untouched by time. Forever.

Years pass and Princess Bubblegum forgets Marceline.

Almost.


	2. I

**TOWER, TOWER – [Part I]**

* * *

"Your Majesty," her attendant tries. He falters. His voice sticks in his throat and Princess Bubblegum turns from her bedchamber's window to look at him, the glare of the dawn sharp at her eye's corner. She's in her nightgown still. The floorboards are cold underfoot, and if she squints she can see the dim steam of her breath in the air.

Her butler is trembling too. She doesn't need to squint to see that.

"Peppermint?" Bubblegum acknowledges gently.

The servant wrings his hands. For a moment he is quiet, looking out the same window Bubblegum was before his arrival. The sun rises there in a riot of orange, bringing with it a chilly whisper of the coming season and the scutter of dead leaves on the sill. The panes tinge tangerine.

"It's happened again, Majesty," the butler says at last. "We received the news mere minutes ago. The runner was practically foaming—he's fatigued beyond measure. But he's waiting for you if you want to speak with him—"

It's too early for the feeling of dread—for the feeling of _fear_—that loops its coils fast about Bubblegum's middle. "Later," she declines. "Let him rest." And then, "Who this time, Peppermint?"

"The Duke and Duchess of Nuts." Gnawing his lip, her attendant cries, "Princess, they were _mutilated_! Their shells were nothing short of pulverized, the runner said—"

"Their children?" Nails biting into her palms, she demands, "Are their children alive?"

His one-word reply is hissed and horrified: "_C-cracked_."

Daybreak's first questing rays on the back of Bubblegum's neck are like knives, and suddenly the room is too hot despite it being November. She closes her eyes—folds a hand over her mouth, taking a seat on her bed's edge. Too many mornings lately have started like this, slow candleflame daylight in the window and the news of another ally's death smoldering down the sun's wick.

"Something must be done." She blinks her eyes open again and looks over at Peppermint Butler, who repeats urgently, "Princess, something _must_ be done. The carnage creeps closer to us with every slaying. You are surely a target as well—your life is in jeopardy—"

"Do you have a suggestion?"

"We'll hide you until this catastrophe has passed," the butler affirms at once. "We'll—we'll secret you away! Perhaps in the Licorice Forest—it's dense, Princess, and remote. No one would think to look for you there. Lemongrab would be honored to hold the crown in your absence."

Smiling despite herself at the attendant's vigor, Bubblegum demurs, "And that target you mentioned earlier, Peppermint… would he be honored to hold that for me too?"

After a moment of strangled quiet, the butler speaks again. "I beg you, Princess, don't be _noble_. He is your subject, bound to serve you—"

"But _not_ bound to give his life for me."

"He would do it! _I'll _do it, if I must." The butler straightens, bristling. "Or please, let _someone _else stand for the throne. Anyone would volunteer, I know." He reaches to touch her knee. "We can't afford to lose you. You ended the Gumdrop Conflict—you've kept our kingdom at peace for years, ensuring our citizens go uneaten…" Trailing off, he waves to the window and finishes, "We are nothing without you."

Bubblegum shifts her gaze to the sprawl of her kingdom beyond the window's panes. Already the streets are bustling—if she strains her ears she can hear the clatter of the carts there, the faint calls of the breakfast vendors. She brushes her fingers over her friend's small striped hand. "You give yourselves too little credit," she murmurs, and continues despite his mutinous face, "something has determined to kill off the royalty in Ooo. We must face that fact—turning from it will do us no good. We must _mobilize_, Peppermint. We must prepare to fight it."

Her audience blanches. "This threat has slipped unseen past the finest militaries in existence, Majesty, and our own militia is marshmallow-based at best." Clutching at her nightgown's hem, the servant ventures, "Knowing that, how are we supposed to _fight _it?"

"Bananas." Smiling weakly, Bubblegum squeezes Peppermint Butler's hand and professes, "I wish I knew."

* * *

Later, alone, Bubblegum paces the length of her bedroom. She neglects her breakfast tray, lost in thought—devotes herself to the challenge at hand. This is the way she resolves problems: by mulling them over, by picking them apart piecemeal until their solutions are just as clear as ink in a water glass. She has before evolved treaties standing in her slippers thus—has negotiated strategies, planned speeches, crafted the cores of amity between her citizens and the peoples of the surrounding kingdoms.

This time, though, despite hours of pondering, she comes up empty.

Folding herself down before the bookcase at her bed's edge, Bubblegum gazes ceilingward and asks the yellow noontime quiet of the chamber, "What am I going to _do_?"

She knocks her head back against the bookcase.

From one of the higher shelves something falls: lands hard with an explosion of dust on the floor nearby Bubblegum's hip. She jerks and stares at it, startled. It's a tome nigh grimy from disuse, nevertheless bright as a coin in the room's sunshine: great, golden, leatherbound. A moment later she recognizes it and, with a small smile, shifts to touch it. Her childhood storybook, yes: it's been years since she gave it so much as a thought.

Dragging it close, Bubblegum hefts the book and hugs it to her chest. "Would that I had a Marceline to protect my kingdom now," she mumbles into its spine.

In another moment's flicker she blinks: lifts her head again, eyes wide.

"Peppermint!" she cries. Staggering to her feet, she rushes across the bedchamber—throws open the door. Her servant comes dashing down the hall at her herald and Bubblegum, still in her nightdress, rushes to meet him, brandishing high the storybook in one hand. "Peppermint," she insists, "I need a _knight_!"


	3. II

**TOWER, TOWER – [Part II]**

* * *

"A knight?" Peppermint Butler frowns at his princess dubiously. "But Majesty, knights are _rare_—they do have that unfortunate habit of jousting and skewering one other, you know."

"I do know that, Peppermint, yes." Sliding a little in her stocking feet, Bubblegum marches down the hall and motions for her servant to follow. She rolls the storybook into her elbow's hinge. Its weight is a comfort, its smell—because it does have one, yes, all oak and linen and nostalgia—a balm. Already she feels better. _Assured_, somehow.

"And begging your pardon, but how do you intend to assess and further swear the strength of such a knight? The _capability_?" Peppermint Butler must nearly jog to keep up with her. "To the best of my knowledge a kingdom typically holds tournaments for that sort of thing. Do we have that luxury? Is there really time?"

"We don't—no, there isn't time." They turn a corner together. A blast of cold, autumn-scented air from an open window along the corridor stirs Bubblegum's nightgown—she shivers but presses on. "That's not a worry, though. We have no reason to hold a tournament."

"No?"

"No," confirms the princess. "I already have someone in mind for the job."

"You do?"

"Mmm. In fact, that person is the only one who will do. That person"—and the princess stops at the runners' station; the attendant there stares at her, agog for her state of dress—"is the best knight Ooo has ever seen. Mark me on that. You!" Signaling the runner, Bubblegum orders him to, "Go to the Cotton Candy Forest and find Lady Rainicorn. Tell her I need her help now, please—quickly!"

The runner—well. He runs. Looking after him with a furrowed brow, Peppermint Butler queries, "Majesty, since when did you become such an expert on knights? I was unaware you'd ever met one."

Bubblegum starts back toward her bedchamber. Ever faithful, her servant trails her again. "I haven't," she admits. "Ever met a knight, I mean."

"Then how do you know of the best one in Ooo?"

Wordless, Bubblegum holds up the storybook. Squares of light from the windows along the hallway stipple over it, cutting golden bars along its surface. Peppermint Butler stops, squints: blinks. "Begging your pardon," he repeats for the second time in so many minutes, "but Majesty, you can't be serious."

"Oh _believe _me, Peppermint. I'm dead serious."

"More like just dead!" Throwing up his hands, the butler proclaims, "Princess, Marceline is merely a character in a _story_! A good character, yes, in an equally good story—but still! She is _fictional_! How do you expect—"

"You needn't yell," Bubblegum puts in mildly. She opens the door to her room, beckons her servant inside: closes it again behind them.

Abashed, Peppermint Butler grimaces. "I apologize. But—but! How do you expect a _fictional _character to be able to help you?"

"Us," Bubblegum corrects. "She's going to help _us_. And I expect her to be able to do so, my friend, because in every story there is a thread of truth—in every book there is a gain for the reader if they only look for it. If they pay _attention_. And Peppermint, Marceline is to be our gain."

Depositing the tome on her desk, the princess hurries to her closet to dress. As she struggles into her court attire, fumbling at the buttons, Peppermint Butler moves to help her. For a moment he is quiet, his expression unreadable. He neatens her collar and intones at last, though, "You think Marceline is real."

"I think it is extremely possible."

"And you think she's just _out _there somewhere, Majesty, waiting and willing to take on the responsibility of knighthood once more?"

"I think she is out there," the princess amends, "looking for something or someone to protect again. Untouched by time. Forever. Or so the story goes. And if we don't need protection, well, I don't know who does."

She turns. Peppermint Butler sets about lacing up the back of her gown. "All right," he manages reluctantly. "Say she _is _real. How do you intend to convince her to help us?"

Shrugging, Bubblegum posits, "Appeal to her sense of decency and honor? Her compassion?" _Snik-snik_: she fastens the catches at the edges of her sleeves, each of them gleaming crimson. Like drops of blood. Like eyes red as apples too, perhaps. "Besides that," she continues, "how often are kingdoms faced with great peril and in need of her services? Maybe she's bored. Maybe she'll do it for that reason if nothing else."

Peppermint Butler makes a small noncommittal noise in the back of his throat. "Mm. And how will you find her? Ooo is vast—she could be _anywhere_."

He's finished with her dress now. Free to move about without fear of flashing anyone, Bubblegum walks back to her desk. She leans down to pull on her boots. "I'll look in the place she's most likely to be," she answers reasonably.

"Which is where? How could you possibly know—"

"Wouldn't you want to be somewhere like home?" Bubblegum interrupts the butler. "If you were a rogue knight unable to go back to your kingdom for fear of taking on a corrupt crown, wouldn't you at least want to be in a place like it?" Tapping her heels down hard on the floor, she pursues, "Lady Rainicorn will help me find it. A place that's dark but not _dark_-dark—with shadows but stars to go with them, and moonshine too. A place where everything's silver, like spoons."

"Like spoons and forks," sighs her friend. Looking desperately up at her, he chews his lip and whispers next, "Majesty, how can you believe this will work?"

Bubblegum pushes off the desk's edge. Kneeling to take her butler's head in her hands, she smiles and professes, "I have never been given any reason to doubt books." Kissing his brow, she adds, "Much less the people who once read them to me."


	4. III

**TOWER, TOWER – [Part III]**

* * *

After Bubblegum explains the situation, the story, her plan, and the place she needs to find to set the last in motion, Lady Rainicorn provides a fretful hum. She is silent for the next several moments, butting her nose into the princess's open palm, twining her long iridescent body anxiously, protectively about her monarch. After all, Bubblegum is not just a ruler to the unicorn—she is her friend. They've known each other since childhood, since drizzly long-ago afternoons wherein the princess chased raindrops down windowpanes with her fingers and the Lady laughed at her from the riot of colors inside each glistening speck.

Given the sudden short lifespan of Ooo's remaining royalty, the Lady is understandably concerned.

"You've traveled the skies more than anyone else I know," Bubblegum murmurs at length, breaking the courtyard's tense quiet. "Can you think of anywhere that looks like what the story describes, Lady? Dark but not _dark_-dark? Shadows with stars too—moonshine and silver everywhere?"

Still Lady Rainicorn says nothing. Her eyes shutter closed and her horn shimmers; the bushes at the courtyard's edge flicker magenta for her unease. A moment later she lifts her head, though, and chirrups thoughtfully, "Do the stars have to be in the sky?" At her friend's inquisitive look, she continues, "I know a place where one fell once—a star, I mean. It left pieces of itself behind. Those pieces still shine, and around them there is black sand that, in the moonlight, looks…"

"Silver," Bubblegum finishes. Hope flares in her breast. "You're wonderful, Lady. Let's start there."

* * *

It takes hours to reach the place, such that the sky slopes from blue to purple and the moon winks at the horizon as a great pale eye. As it rises, leering, Lady Rainicorn circles low. Unwinding beneath them is something like a desert, a vast expanse of ebony sand studded here and there with boulders and scraggly, wind-beaten trees. Through the middle of it runs the gaping mouth of a gorge, deep and jagged, a snake of darkness.

"There the star fell," the Lady confides. She hovers, ribboning slowly through the impending night's chill air. Bubblegum flexes her numb hands attentively and the unicorn continues, "It's not much now, but wait a moment. Moonrise will change it."

And moonrise _does _change it. Climbing up the clouds, the huge orb spills its light into the gorge in the same way a kettle pours tea into a cup. The pewter glow froths and foams through the canyon, catching on cracks in the rock. In those cracks are bits of otherworldly metal: memories of the star that crashed here. They shine as promised, flashing, shimmering, sending up spangles of silver and sloughing down shadows too.

Breathless, Bubblegum stares until her eyes twinge. "Take us down, Lady?" she requests.

Moments later Bubblegum dismounts and lands on the gorge's floor, sending up small puffs of black dust. Her breath fogs before her chin and she shoulders her bag, heavy despite containing only one thing: the storybook from her room back in the Candy Kingdom. The corner of said book peeks from beneath the carrier's flap. She rubs it for reassurance, looking around.

The gorge is wider across than her palace is deep. Its glittering walls tower overhead—the light here is threadbare and thin, and only if Bubblegum squints can she make out the discerning shape of her friend at her side.

"What now?" asks the Lady, nuzzling into her spare shoulder.

Bubblegum hesitates. Silence settles thick about them: there is no wind, no rustle of flora or even the faint flicker of a cricket's song. "Well," she begins, and starts at the boom of her own voice. It reverberates back immediately, a mournful _ell-ell-ell-ell_. Lady Rainicorn coils nervously. "Well," the princess attempts a second time, whispering now, "you go that way, I suppose"—she points—"and I'll go this way. Call for her. If she's here somewhere, she'll hear us."

"Is it safe for you to be alone?"

Glancing aside at the deep pockets of gloom lining the canyon walls, Bubblegum bites down on the prickle of fear in her mouth and nods. "I am safer here than I am in my own bedchamber, most likely." She reaches to caress the Lady's muzzle. "In an hour we'll meet here again. Yes?"

The unicorn exhales warmly into her palm in assent. An instant later she is gone.

Steeling herself against the darkness, Bubblegum turns on her heel and meanders slowly in the opposite direction. After a few strides she cups a hand to her mouth, sucks in a breath, and calls out as loudly as she can, "_MARCELINE!_"

The echo goes on for a while, thundering across the gorge like cannonfire. As it fades Bubblegum moves farther into the canyon: calls again. Walks. Calls a third time. Walks. Over and over, until her throat is raw and her voice reduced to a hoarse squeak in her chest.

Finally she stops, her hope smoldering and her hour nearly spent. Tipping her head back, she stares at the heavens—blows her breath out through her teeth. Her hands are so cold now she can scarcely feel them, but she clenches them anyway and runs the knuckles of either fist into her jaw: once, twice, thrice. Her shoulder aches from carrying the storybook. "Maybe it was stupid to come here," she allows. "Maybe it was stupid to think she was real."

The stars—both in the sky and along the canyon walls—glimmer at her in wordless reply.

Sighing, Bubblegum turns again and makes to walk back the way she came. Two steps later she runs face-first into a very solid pair of breasts.

With a cry of pure surprise she scrambles backward, trips: falls flat on her buttocks on the gorge floor before a woman she's never seen anywhere but in her imagination. A woman of lean limbs and a sharp smile, eyes red as apples.

"Hey there, loudmouth," says Marceline. "Looking for me?"


	5. IV

**TOWER, TOWER - [Part IV]**

* * *

Marceline is tall—a head more so than Bubblegum, probably. In the feeble moonlight her skin is a queer kind of cornflower blue: her face is angular, her chin severe and her cheekbones prominent. Longer even than Bubblegum's, her dark hair flares in an unruly spiky cascade to her ankles. Said ankles are encased in boots, and Bubblegum gets a very good look at those boots because they're not quite touching the ground, no, their tips only just brushing the dust of the gorge floor. Marceline is hovering—no. Marceline is—

"Flying. You're _flying_," Bubblegum observes stupidly, and points at the small separation between Marceline's feet and the soil beneath them. "There was _nothing _in the story about you being able to fly!"

Marceline blinks at the princess. She does it slowly and her gaze is all embers, smoldering low: but then she drops with a faint rustle to the ground and leans over Bubblegum, frowning. Two small triangles peep from beneath her upper lip. "Uh, yeah," she murmurs, "I didn't see it happen, but I think you must've hit your head when you fell, lady—"

"Are those your _teeth_?" interrupts the princess. She reaches up and furls her fingers over Marceline's cheeks, driving her thumbs into the other woman's flesh to force her lips apart. She gets a glimpse of long white canines, thick and curving into needlepoint pricks, before Marceline shakes her head and breaks Bubblegum's grip.

"You've got a concussion," she decides. "A bad one. Sheesh. How many fingers?" She holds up two. She's wearing gloves. Red ones. They match her eyes. "Try not to move too much, all right? Do you remember your name?"

Beaming, the monarch insists, "I am Princess Bubblegum of the Candy Kingdom, that's a double"—she nods to Marceline's fingers—"and I _don't _have a concussion. I'm just—I'm just _so _happy to see you!" And because she is indeed nearly swooning in her relief—Marceline is here, alive, in the flesh, _real_ and maybe her kingdom does stand a chance after all—Bubblegum throws her arms up and wraps them around the taller woman's neck.

There is a moment: a tense, winding moment of quiet wherein Marceline's jasmine-scented hair rasps roughly over Bubblegum's cheek, and Bubblegum becomes intimately aware of the fact that Marceline's got an absolutely huge axe strapped to her shoulders. Its razored edges wink and shimmer, not unlike the stardust scraped along the canyon walls, and then the other woman catches Bubblegum's elbows and pries her free.

"That's, uhm—that's nice," she manages. "Mind telling me _why _you're so happy to see me, Princess? Because hey, not that I _mind _inspiring feelings of such ecstasy, but I'm pretty sure I don't know you—"

"Yes, that's true," interjects Bubblegum, "but I know _you_, Marceline. I have since I was a child. I—oh!" Breaking off, the princess fumbles for her bag. Dragging the storybook free, she shows it to her audience and goes on, "My favorite tale in here was yours. How you grew into a fierce warrior, became your king's knight: how he fell to madness and—"

She stops, not because she's forgotten the story but because Marceline's hand is clenching over her arm's meat, hard and almost tight enough to hurt. Mentally the princess berates herself: such memories are probably painful for Marceline. Sliding the book around and opening it to the mentioned story, Bubblegum belatedly employs her sense of tact and offers, "Well, it's all here."

Another stretch of silence blooms between them as Marceline crouches, takes the storybook in hand, and lifts it. Her head bends to obscure the tome—her eyes flicker over the words on its pages, too quick for Bubblegum to chase. At last she huffs, a small smile curling her mouth's corner, "Yeah. Yeah, I guess it is all here, huh?" She adds, voice dipping to a mutter, "I didn't realize enough time had passed that it's just a freaking bedtime story now. Centuries, man—they come and go."

_Centuries_? Bubblegum opens her mouth to reply when Marceline snaps the book closed again. The brash _whap _makes Bubblegum jump. Thrusting the manuscript back at the monarch, Marceline allows, "Okay. So, yeah—you want an autograph or something, Princess? I don't make a habit of carrying quills."

"No. I don't want your signature. I want to hire you as my knight," Bubblegum answers. Straightening, she insists, "My kingdom is in great danger, you see. A terrible force is causing mayhem, progressively slaughtering all the royalty in Ooo. I—and my people—need your protection."

A thin breeze whispers through the canyon, stirring a shiver at the base of Bubblegum's spine. Marceline stares at her: for one moment. Two. She ventures finally, "Let me see if I've got this right. You came what I assume is a long way"—Bubblegum nods—"to ask me, a supposed legendary figure"—cue second nod—"to protect you from, what? A mysterious bad guy?"

"An as yet unidentified and extraordinarily capable assassin, yes," Bubblegum confirms.

Marceline purses her lips. Her mouth twitches; her right eyelid spasms and then she's laughing, her teeth so like the blades the story spoke of that Bubblegum leans instinctively back a bit. "Wow," she wheezes at last, "_geez_. Not gonna lie. That's pathetic, Princess. Downright lame." Rising, the taller woman gives Bubblegum's head a pat and urges, "Do your kingdom a favor. Grow up. Expecting a storybook hero to save you—that's _completely_ naïve."

Bubblegum watches as Marceline turns and begins to drift—not walk—away. A fiery, quivery sensation erupts next in the princess's belly and spreads its thorns high: through her chest, into her throat. It's deep, disappointed anger, too bitter and hopeless for tears.

The book is like an anvil in her lap.

Climbing to her feet, Bubblegum dusts off her dress and admits coolly, "Having read the story, perhaps I was indeed completely naïve in expecting you to be anything but a coward."

Marceline stops.


	6. V

**TOWER, TOWER – [Part V]**

* * *

"What did you say?"

Marceline turns. Her tunic flutters in the night's low breeze; her hair undulates, tendrils of it quivering aggressively midair. The moonlight catches the flare of her eyes as they narrow, the slick of her smile as she smirks, a terrible twist of lips over teeth. She laughs, just once: lifts a hand to cup it around her ear.

"Sorry," she revisits, "but I _think _I might've misunderstood you, Princess. _What _did you say to me just then?"

Princess Bubblegum is a calm, collected individual on any given day. Typically she is slow to anger—she is hard to offend and even harder to vex, and when her temper does ignite she is often rational enough to bite down on her bile and maintain her discipline. Her borders are peaceful as such, her neighbors courteous, her alliances strong.

Every single shred of civility Bubblegum was ever taught, however, dissolves at the sight of Marceline's leering little sneer.

"A thousand apologies," Bubblegum demurs. "I mumbled. How _rude _of me." Clearing her throat, she scowls at the other woman and enunciates with painstaking clarity, "I called you a _coward_, Marceline."

The legend gapes at the princess. A feeble cloud scuttles over the moon and away again just as quickly, scissoring the pair in shadows.

Holding up the storybook, Bubblegum shakes it and admits as she strides toward her audience, "This was read to me again and again in my youth, you know, because I begged to hear it, and when the story was over I _always _asked why you left your kingdom." She hurls the tome to the gorge floor just beneath Marceline's feet: not because she bears it any ill will but because she is trembling, all the fear and anger and frustration of the past day boiling up into her mouth, and her fingers are too nerveless now to hold it. As black dust mushrooms up around her childhood relic, she hisses, "My butler insisted you made your exit because you thought the kingdom could rule itself better than you, maybe—or that you disappeared because you were worried the crown would twist you the same way it had twisted your king. It's a shame"—nigh seething, Bubblegum jabs a finger into Marceline's stomach—"but now I know he was wrong."

Flames dance in the former knight's eyes, oranges and bronzes and slow, licking reds. Bubblegum has the comet-stray thought that they're quite pretty, those eyes with their embers, before Marceline licks her lips and drops with a soft _shup _to the ground. She leans in. Close enough that Bubblegum can feel the cold breath on her brow, the taller woman purrs, "You really _are _a loudmouth. Button it, baby. That's my first and last warning to you."

Bubblegum ignores said warning and proclaims, thrusting her finger into the opposing collar this time, "You were afraid." She sucks in a shivery breath and repeats, "A moment of need arose and you were _afraid _and you ran, just like you're running now. You useless, spineless _coward_."

Stillness: sweeping. Throughout the canyon nothing moves—for a few scattered seconds, anyway. Next Marceline lifts an arm and curls her hand around the hilt of the axe strapped across her shoulders. "I am going to _seriously _enjoy maiming you," she confesses. "I mean, wow. You have _no _idea."

No one should be able to lift an axe that size with the effortless grace Marceline does. Beneath her tunic her bicep uncoils; her elbow snaps and the weapon slips from its harness with a gentle _snick_. Tossing it to her other hand over Bubblegum's head, Marceline scrapes the axe's blade down the canyon wall. Blue sparks erupt in a shower, in a torrent, in a geyser and Bubblegum, who knows she should be terrified, feels still only deep, resentful anger. Tears prick the corners of her eyes.

"Perfect!" she observes furiously. She shifts a step back and throws her arms wide. "Yes! Go on, then! Take a swipe at me! You can't possibly miss, can you? Here, how about this—why don't I just make it a little easier for you?" She tears off her tiara: lowers her head, bending at the waist. Her hair falls aside and the breeze stirs her bare nape, coaxing gooseflesh to life along arms, her torso. Clutching hard at her crown, Bubblegum finishes in a snarl, "Add another monarch's death to your conscience!"

She closes her eyes, the tears in them spilling frigid over her cheeks, and waits for the axe to fall.

And waits.

And waits even longer.

When finally her back has begun to protest the awkward angle, Bubblegum glances aright and finds Marceline not brandishing her weapon but leaning on it, her face pointed skyward. The princess slowly straightens and squints up too, trying to discern what's captured the other woman's attention so. The heavens are full of stars and stippled clouds and the great yawning moon, just the same as before, and Bubblegum is gazing at them curiously through her breath's muzzy fog when Marceline sighs, "You're the first not to run."

Blinking back down at the former knight, the princess frowns. "Excuse me?"

Marceline shrugs, smiling. It's a wry expression—resigned, almost. "That damn book," she mutters. She drops a boot onto that very manuscript and allows, "It gets around. You're not the first to come here, Princess—not _nearly_. But in almost five hundred _freaking _years, sheesh, you are _indeed_ the first not to run."

Bubblegum's anger begins to falter, replaced by fatigue and puzzlement. "I don't understand what you—"

"You'll get there," Marceline interrupts. Sliding her hand down her axe's hilt, she flicks her gaze to Bubblegum's—holds it as she folds to one knee on the gorge's dark floor, her other foot propped on the storybook still. Her gloves creak as she reaches to take Bubblegum's fingers. She draws them to her mouth. Kisses them. In the moonlight her teeth are silver, like spoons.

"Milady," she agrees.


	7. VI

**TOWER, TOWER - [Part VI]**

* * *

Bubblegum stares down at the circle of Marceline's dark head: at the jagged ridge of her cheek where it sweeps into her jaw. At the blade of her nose—at the knight's eyelashes, even, furled and feathery, cinders over the shuttered simmer of her gaze. She tightens her fingers. Marceline's glove is cold.

"That was a test?" she asks.

"Ah-huh." Keeping the princess's hand, Marceline rises, stretches, and re-shoulders her axe. Next she spreads her arms wide, her fingers flared with the tips up. "Can you blame me?" She grins. "I mean, I can't just run off with every princess that comes through here. I've gotta have _standards_, you know?"

A remnant knot of ire wriggles in Bubblegum's belly. She snatches her hand from the knight's grasp, resisting the urge to wipe it on her dress. "Well," she snaps, "I'm so glad I've met them." Before she can stop herself, she adds, "You _cretin_."

Marceline throws back her head and laughs. For what she gathers won't be the last time, Bubblegum marvels at the slick sharpness of the teeth in the other woman's mouth. "Oho, _heh_," Marceline husks, "I _like _you, Princess." She kicks off the gorge floor and wheels onto her back midair, drifting in a slow semicircle around Bubblegum. "You're _feisty_. Wouldn't've guessed it looking at you—come _on_. Even your hair's pink." She reaches to fondle a lock of said hair.

Bubblegum scowls. "Is pink a problem?"

Marceline floats nearer. Her hand folds fully over Bubblegum's braid—squeezes it. "Suppose not," she admits. Tugging the braid, she observes, "Stretchy. Your name can't seriously be Bubblegum, can it?"

"It seriously can." As Marceline's thumb taps her cheek, though, the princess relents and offers, "Bonnibel."

"Mm?" Marceline glides to hover parallel to the monarch's front, gazing at her intently. Her eyebrows arch. Between her thumb and forefinger she smushes the tip of Bubblegum's braid into a dented triangle.

"Bonnibel," repeats the princess. "Bonnibel Bubblegum. And _stop _it."

"It's not my fault you're fun to play with, _Bonnibel_," chuckles Marceline.

No one's ever said Bubblegum's name like that, all rough and raspy and rolling on the tongue. She shivers, folds her arms: rubs them. She's long since forgotten what it's like to feel warmth. "Were you playing with me earlier?" she demands. "Will you help me? My kingdom?"

Shadows jump over the knight's tunic as she shrugs. "Sure I will. I don't kneel for just anyone." Glancing at the princess, Marceline smirks—runs her tongue's tip between her lips. Is it _forked_? "Or do I seem like that kind of woman?"

A flush blooms at the base of Bubblegum's neck and crawls up her pulsepoint's trellis. "N-no! I—I'm _sorry_, I didn't mean to impugn your honor—"

"_And _you're fun to tease!" exults the knight. "But no, Princess, I'm serious. I'll help you. _If_"—and she holds up a finger—"we can reach an accord about something now."

"An accord about what?" Bubblegum inclines her head, unable to help the small smile that tugs at her mouth. Diplomacy is her specialty—not to mention it's hard to stay mad at someone in such good humor. A renewed sense of hope kindles in her chest. "If you mean compensation," she starts, "room and board aside, I'm prepared to offer you—"

"Fresh strawberries," Marceline interjects. "A bowl of them. Every night at sundown. _That's _my fee. But not my accord."

Startled, Bubblegum smiles: honestly this time. "Truly?"

"Yep." Into the space between them Marceline thrusts her hand. "I'll even shake on that one. Have at." She wiggles her fingers.

After a brief pause, Bubblegum takes the knight's hand. She pumps it once, squeezes it: lets it go. "Our strawberries are quite fine," she provides. "The largest in Ooo. And the juiciest. But Marceline, they're _just _strawberries. There must be something else you want."

There's a flicker then, over Marceline's face and deep in her eyes too: a raw red sliver of something sharp. Something wounded. Bubblegum draws in a soft breath and the other woman murmurs, looking away, "Yeah. If I'm gonna do this, I want to make sure another monarch doesn't die on my watch, okay? You got that, Princess?"

"I—"

"You have to do what I tell you." Abruptly Marceline's gaze is on Bubblegum again, pinning her with its fervor, with its heat. "You have to do what I tell you," she says a second time. "No matter how strange it sounds to you—no matter how trivial it seems, no matter how beneath your station it feels. Because the moment you don't, I'm gone." Across an invisible bridge Marceline walks two fingers, then waves. "Bye-bye. Out the door. _See ya_."

The canyon is quiet. The breeze lulls—the moon shines, fever bright. Bubblegum surveys Marceline thoughtfully in its glow. "How do I know you won't demand my crown?" she posits. A thread of raven hair crawls over Marceline's throat and, watching it, the princess finds her mouth curiously dry. "My favor?" she blurts next. "My, ah"—she struggles, seizes at, forces out finally—"attentions?"

Marceline looks at her. Marceline _beams_. Bubblegum shudders—not because she's cold this time. "Hey," the knight assures her gently, "I could have a crown if I wanted one, couldn't I? You've read the story." Swinging her heels around, she sidles to Bubblegum until they're shoulder to shoulder. Dropping her head such that their cheeks brush too, she whispers in the monarch's ear, her fingertip tracing slow up the slant of Bubblegum's chin, "As to the _other _things, hmph… who says I'd need to _demand_ those, Bonnibel?"

Heat: vining over Bubblegum's face, fierce and unrelenting. Her heartbeat a drum in her neck, she muses, "You think rather highly of yourself, don't you?"

Marceline thumbs Bubblegum's lower lip in reply: lifts her fingers away and offers her hand once more, star-splayed. "Do we have an accord?" she presses.

One breath. Two. Clasping Marceline's palm on the third, Bubblegum affirms, "We have an accord."


	8. VII

**TOWER, TOWER - [Part VII]**

* * *

Within the hour they find Lady Rainicorn, make introductions, and set their course back for the Candy Kingdom. Bubblegum dozes most of the journey home, canted so far forward between the unicorn's shoulderblades that her brow nearly touches her friend's swaying neck. Alongside them Marceline flies alone, carrying nothing but her massive axe and the storybook. She flips through the latter as Ooo spools out its tapestry beneath them, stretching out a hand occasionally to ease the princess aright.

The fourth or fifth time she does this, Bubblegum captures her knight's fingers and informs her sleepily, "You needn't worry. I won't fall."

Marceline glances at her over the storybook's spine. "Sure about that, Bonnibel?"

"Mm-hm." Gifting the other woman a drowsy smile, Bubblegum burrows her face into Lady Rainicorn's mane. She flattens her free palm against the varicolored hide beneath it. "The Lady—she takes care of me."

"Yeah, well." Marceline smirks and squeezes the princess's hand. "That's my job now too. Ease up a bit, c'mon—tighten your legs."

The complete innocence of the comment does nothing to help Bubblegum's faint fluster. She obliges the knight and straightens atop the Lady with a murmur of assent, releasing Marceline's hand—looking off eastward too, where her palace's frosted parapets are visible as spires on the moon-glazed horizon. "There," she says, and points. "We're almost home."

"Looks delicious," Marceline acknowledges. Snapping the book closed, she squints toward the realm now under her protection: frowns. The expression curls over her face like a comma, dark and deep. "Didn't realize you'd have such nightlife," she admits.

"What?" Her hands curled into fists in the Lady's mane, Bubblegum leans over the unicorn's side to see. As they ribbon closer to her kingdom, the princess is able to make out the teeming streets: her palace's courtyard too, awash with the still distant specks of her royal staff. On the breeze she can hear the tinny whistles of their shrieks.

Bubblegum's stomach rolls like a hot stone and sinks just as quickly. "Hurry, Lady," she whispers. "Please. Something's wrong."

In a few brief moments they've cut the distance to nothing. Lady Rainicorn coils down into the palace courtyard, and Bubblegum has barely had time to dismount when Peppermint Butler, wailing, crashes into her legs.

"Princess! Oh Princess, thank _goodness _you're all right—" Thick, sugary syrup streaming down his face, the servant chokes and spends the next few seconds clutching wordlessly at her dress.

Bowled backward against Lady Rainicorn's shoulder by his vehemence, Bubblegum blinks at her attendant. "Of course I am, Peppermint," she affirms. From the corner of her eye she can see the remainder of her staff edging forward as one collective entity. They're all crying too, hands outstretched, the features of some smeared into paste for their tears. "I was only gone a few hours," she resumes. "What's happened? What—"

"We thought you were _dead_!" sobs Peppermint Butler. His stripes have begun to run. Fisting his hands in her dress now, he drops to his knees and moans again, "Oh Princess, we thought you were _dead_."

The butler dissolves into helpless weeping. Kneeling to enfold him in her arms, Bubblegum looks over the assembly of her people and ventures a second time, "Who can tell me what's happened? Why did everyone think I was dead?"

For a moment there is no sound but the hitching breaths of hundreds as the Candy People stare at their princess. More have clustered at the palace gates—no small number clamber over or scramble beneath Lady Rainicorn simply to get close enough to touch Bubblegum. Finally a housekeeper pipes up, voice hoarse, "Lemongrab was murdered in court this morning, Majesty, not an hour after you left. We… we assumed whoever killed him had gotten to you first."

Bubblegum is at first unable to comprehend the statement. She blinks blankly at the housekeeper, scrubbing her hands rhythmically down Peppermint Butler's back. Someone in the crowd groans. At her side Lady Rainicorn shudders, and the princess opens and closes her mouth once, twice, three times, managing at last, "Lemongrab? Murdered? But—"

"Has the body been moved?"

Heads swivel—Bubblegum's included. Marceline, who was before standing silently off to the princess's side, dips her chin and repeats, "Has the body been moved?"

Soft muttering stirs the crowd. Wringing her hands, the housekeeper disagrees, "N-no—we, ah… we were uncertain what to do with him—"

"Good," Marceline offers. "Show it to me, please."

A thick hesitation settles over the courtyard. The housekeeper—in fact, every single Candy person present—looks first at Marceline and then to Bubblegum.

Realizing they have no idea just who Marceline is, Bubblegum makes her best attempt to quash her shock. She rises—keeping one of Peppermint Butler's hands the whole while—and announces, "Everyone, this is Marceline, a knight of great strength and prowess. She will defend our kingdom henceforth." With her free hand she reaches to clasp the other woman's shoulder.

Under her touch and before the throng of watching Candy People, Marceline executes a short bow. It's perhaps the perfect thing to do, enacted with finesse despite no rehearsal: moonlight whickers sharp over the axe on her back and the crowd shivers with a unanimous, respectful _aaaah_.

"Regrettably I am a bit late," Marceline intones. Turning to face Bubblegum, she takes the princess's fingers and squeezes them. "Majesty," she insists, "I must revisit my earlier demand to see the body. It is possible the assassin left behind identifying clues. The sooner I am able to examine it, the better."

Bubblegum gapes at Marceline. Gone is the ribald, flirting tease from the gorge, replaced now by a woman of fierce intent and purpose. In the midst of the crowd she almost towers.

As though from across a great distance Bubblegum hears herself say, "Yes. Yes, of course." Turning, holding fast to her knight with one hand and her faithful servant the other, she maintains, "The court is this way. I'll show you."


	9. VIII

**TOWER, TOWER - [Part VIII]**

* * *

At the door of the court they pause—not because it is locked or even closed completely, but because Peppermint Butler digs his heels into the carpet and stops. Tugging at Bubblegum's wrist, he clears his throat—his eyes are still leaking a bit—and professes, his words clotted, "Majesty, maybe you shouldn't look. What was done to Lemongrab was nothing short of barbaric." He hesitates. Drawing in a deep breath in what is presumably an effort to calm himself, the servant finishes, "He is not as he once was," and falls miserably quiet.

Bubblegum hesitates. She flicks her gaze to the door, a fingerwidth ajar and spilling free a single orange bar of smoky torchlight—to Marceline next, whose impassive face betrays no advice or judgment either. Licking her lips, the princess determines, "Maybe he isn't, Peppermint, but he deserves my attention even so. Whether or not he meant to, he gave his life for me—this is the least I can do for him." She straightens: releases her hold on her butler and Marceline. Pressing her palm to the door, she pushes it open. She steps into the court.

Countless days she has rested daydreaming on the throne at the long room's fore, but one glance at it now tells Bubblegum she will never again sit there idly. Stretched lengthwise and stiffening across the small chair is a great yellow rind. Flayed at the edges, that rind gapes open like some terrible flower, exposing feathery, fibrous insides and—

"Seeds, oh," Bubblegum observes numbly. To her own ears her voice is too breathy, too high. Marceline looks askance at her and she tells the knight, "I did always wonder whether he had those."

Before Marceline can reply, Bubblegum starts again toward the throne. The walk to it is ten strides—Bubblegum's been bored enough to count them before. On the seventh the runner carpet that spans the room's width squelches underfoot; the smell of fading citrus is almost overpowering, and Bubblegum's stomach performs an unpleasantly acrobatic flip. She falters, stops entirely: gazes in horrified silence at the eviscerated—no, _peeled_—corpse of her regent.

"Was anyone here when this happened?" she hears Marceline ask Peppermint Butler. Stepping up to the throne, the princess leans over Lemongrab. She scrubs his eyes closed with her palm's edge, one at a time—so gently that at first the lids refuse to move.

"He was alone," Peppermint Butler disagrees. "He was to receive a gumdrop audience at two hours past midday—they found him thus." And then: "Princess, please—"

Ignoring her servant and trying in vain to disregard too the rising tremor in her hands, Bubblegum plucks Lemongrab's spectacles from their harassed skew over his ear. Settling them again along his nose's long bridge, she smiles—she feels her mouth wobbling—and replies, "Hush, Peppermint. You know how fastidious he was. It would be a crime to leave him dis… dish-sh-sheveled—"

She bites off the statement's remainder and leans away from her regent, clapping her hands over her mouth. Her stomach heaves a second time: her shoulders hitch. She squeezes her eyes shut and counts to ten, then to twenty, and when she blinks them open again she finds Marceline offering her a handkerchief. It's red. Stitched into its corner is a dark, flared M.

Bubblegum stares at it blankly until Marceline provides, "Majesty, you're crying." And so she is, tears dribbling unchecked down her face.

"I apologize," the princess returns. Squinting through the wet, she takes the handkerchief and smudges at her eyes with it. Like Marceline's hair, it smells of jasmine.

"Don't." The other woman shakes her head. "It would be wrong not to mourn. He was your friend, or something close to it—now he's dead." Marceline says this gently, but something nevertheless twists in Bubblegum's chest at the sound of it. She chokes and the knight resumes, voice softening still more, "Something sharp did this, but not a sword… the wounds are too clean for that. Too precise. It _was _a blade, though, yes. Large and curved, like—"

"An axe?" ventures Peppermint Butler.

A ghost of some small expression flickers over Marceline's lips: a smile? A scowl? It's there and gone too quickly for Bubblegum to tell. Glancing over her shoulder at the servant, the knight acknowledges, "Indeed, an axe is a possibility."

The court is silent for one long, sprawling moment. Edging delicately such that he is between the knight and Bubblegum, Peppermint Butler remarks at last, "You carry the most formidable axe I have ever seen, Lady Marceline."

Marceline straightens and lifts a hand to smooth it along that weapon's hilt. "All the better to protect your princess with, of course," she allows. After giving Lemongrab and the court a final cursory look, she adds, "No footprints. No scent—no trail. No way out groundbound but that one"—she points to the room's single door—"and were guards posted there?"

"Yes. They heard—nor saw—anything," says Peppermint Butler.

Wordless, Marceline tips her head aloft and indicates, with a single finger, the line of windows along the court's parallel walls. Flush with the ceiling, they are all closed: but for one. Through its square the stars glimmer, like eyes.

"Your assassin can most likely fly and carries what may well be an axe," Marceline permits. She looks between the servant and Bubblegum, brows arched.

"How… conspicuous," growls Peppermint Butler, glaring at the knight with open distrust.

Marceline says nothing. Her gaze comes to rest on Bubblegum, expectant. So too does Peppermint Butler's desperate, disapproving countenance.

Tightening her grip on her knight's handkerchief, Bubblegum decides softly, "No, Peppermint. How _fortunate_." With her free hand she gestures to the room in a slow, certain sweep, holding Marceline's eyes the whole while. "If those are the assailant's attributes, Marceline is more than their match. Yes?"

"…I suppose that is correct," admits the butler.

Bubblegum watches her knight's face carefully. This time there's no mistaking it.

Marceline smiles.


	10. IX

**TOWER, TOWER - [Part IX]**

* * *

"Peppermint," asks Bubblegum, "will you fetch the physicians and their staff? If Marceline is finished"—the princess checks; her knight nods—"I want Lemongrab tended in the traditional way." When the butler hesitates, hackled still at Marceline's presence, Bubblegum touches the little man's red-striped wrist and reinforces, "Please?"

Relenting, Peppermint Butler nods. "At once, Majesty." With a last suspicious glower in Marceline's direction, he neatens his collar and scuttles from the court.

Marceline watches him go, smile fading. The moment the door clicks closed behind him, she turns again to Lemongrab and instructs Bubblegum to, "Help me, Princess." The knight crouches at the throne. Her hands fall to the deceased regent's uppermost garment and set about tugging it. Lemongrab's head lolls across the chair's back.

"Stop!" Bubblegum demands, horrified. "_Stop_! What are you _doing_?"

"Fixing his vest," Marceline supplies. She looks aside at the princess and away again just as quickly. "You said he was fastidious—that it would be a crime to leave him disheveled." The leather of the knight's gloves creak as she works at the vest's highest button. "An audience is coming. If you meant what you said, come here and help me tidy him up a bit."

Bubblegum swallows, stars of wet heat flowering at the corners of her eyes. Marceline's managed to get the first button and its neighbor undone when the princess kneels next to Lemongrab and asks, "What do you need me to do?"

"Support his head—hold it there. Yes, like that." As Bubblegum reaches to steady her regent's cold brow, Marceline hastily thumbs his collar back down into the tunic beneath his rumpled vest. Rising next, she nudges, "Here. Switch places with me."

Bubblegum eases backward. Slipping into the small space between the princess and the regent, Marceline braces Lemongrab's temple on her shoulder and slides her arms around him. Paying no mind to the faint sluice of citrus pulp down her front, she heaves him aright and huffs, "Straighten the vest and refasten it, okay? Hurry." Her mouth twitches. "He's heavy."

Fumbling at the buttons, the princess rushes to obey. The little brass nibs scutter under her nails; their eyeholes, soaked and bloated almost shut, take patience to pry open. The fabric is stiff when she pulls it, sticky—sour-smelling.

"Finished," she offers finally. She staggers to her feet. Marceline, meanwhile, eases Lemongrab back into a sitting position on the throne: arranges his hands in his lap. She can do nothing for the massive stain suppurating down his vest's right side and so leaves it thus, stepping away from the regent to stand beside Bubblegum.

Together they study their handiwork. It's temporary—in mere moments he'll be moved again, Bubblegum knows. Regardless…

"He looks contemplative," she whispers, her voice thick in her throat. "Given the circumstances, I believe he would find it acceptable."

From the court's rear the door sounds once more. Peppermint Butler reappears there, followed by the palace physicians and company. As they approach, Marceline turns to face them and Bubblegum is able to see her knight in true profile: sodden gloves, sopping tunic, seed-grimed breeches. The princess's own hands are slick with her regent's lifeblood still.

Clenching them, Bubblegum suggests, "Marceline, accompany me upstairs. My staff will see to the rest here."

* * *

Moments later they reach Bubblegum's bedchamber. The princess ushers her knight in first—steps in herself after, closing and locking the door behind them. Turning then, she crosses the distance to Marceline in two steps and seizes the other woman's nearest hand. Resolutely she begins to peel off its glove.

"I can do that myself, you know," the knight observes.

"Most assuredly so." Bubblegum must nearly yank to prize free the glove. Once she's succeeded in the task, she resumes her efforts on its mate and insists, "You have nevertheless done me a great kindness tonight, and I am your host besides. Let me repay you a little."

"Hey, sure." The other glove squeaks from its grip about Marceline's hand. The knight's flesh is still blue, notes Bubblegum, softly so—enough to hedge toward a heathery hue. Like clouds. Her fingers are the long and slender sort, the nails clipped close to the quick; a thin silver scar winds in a ribbon down her left thumb's shank. "So," Marceline continues, "will you, as my host, be removing the remainder of my clothing too? Because wow, talk about hospitality—"

"Don't be distasteful," Bubblegum scolds the knight. Tossing the gloves into the wastebasket, she adds, "Lift your arms."

Marceline blinks. Arches her brows. Obeys, stretching her arms ceilingward.

Bubblegum must rock onto her tiptoes to skim off her knight's tunic. It comes down in a heavy curtain and she cradles the soggy bundle without really meaning to, pausing to look for a moment at Marceline, the other woman all lean torso and wrapped breasts and—

More scars. Thick and slim and straight and not, a tapestry of them sketched harsh over ribs and plunging too down the knight's belly. Left by fire, some—others by blades, maybe, or claws. A few dance in pairs. In triples. One in particular, as wide across as Bubblegum's palm, shines dully at the notch of Marceline's hip. Bubblegum registers distantly that whatever left it must have gouged out a goodly portion of her knight's guts too.

All at once the princess can think of nothing but that: of wounds and torn yellow flesh and the whorls of a body rent asunder. Her vision swims: her stomach leaps malevolently into her mouth. Dropping the tunic, she lunges into the latrine attached to her bedchamber. She is only just able to make it to the toilet within before she sets about heaving up her day's meager meals.

Footsteps at her side. Dimly she feels Marceline pull back her hair. The knight's fingers are cool on her nape, sliding slow in the sweat there.

"Sssssh," says Marceline as Bubblegum retches and shudders and sobs. "Sssh, Bonnibel. Sssssh. It's all right. I'm here."


	11. X

**TOWER, TOWER - [Part X]**

* * *

After dry-heaving another few moments, Bubblegum drops her head onto her arm and settles for crying. It isn't a practice she indulges in often, today being the exception, and she's not very graceful about it: her face is a ruin of miserable wetness, her nose running, her cheeks awash in tears. Her stomach clenches, cramps. She gags on the bitter taste in her mouth once, twice and then Marceline's hand is cupped at her lips, the knight's palm full of water from the nearby washbasin.

"Enough puking, geez. Sip this," Marceline orders, "and spit it out next. You'll feel better."

Bubblegum obeys. She has no sooner finished relieving herself of the mouthful when Marceline's hand catches her face again. It's wet, cool: the knight's fingers trace Bubblegum's cheeks haphazardly, smearing the tears away, dripping excess down into the princess's lap. Marceline's just as graceful cleaning up the princess as Bubblegum is at crying, and by the time she's finished they're both a good deal damper than when she started.

"I'm here," Marceline revisits, rocking back on her haunches. Frowning at Bubblegum, she insists, "So stop _leaking_, okay? You don't need to freak out anymore."

"Duly noted," croaks Bubblegum. She sniffs—her sinuses throb. Massaging her nose's bridge, she takes hold of the washbasin's edge and rises. "Thank you," she addresses her knight, "for your—ah. For your stalwart presence just now. I'm sorry you had to see me…" She trails off. Her cheeks feel too hot, too sticky to gather a blush.

"Yeah, hey, it's fine," Marceline dismisses. "Everyone hurls, Princess." She straightens too, smoothing her hands dry on her breeches. Glancing aside at Bubblegum, she smirks and ventures, one of her odd sharp-looking teeth jutting down at her mouth's corner, "Was the sight of my almost-nude torso just that repulsive to you?"

With a snort, Bubblegum slips past the knight and steps back out into her bedchamber. "Don't be ridiculous." She collects the sopping tunic from the floor and drops it into the wastebasket with Marceline's gloves. "Your torso is not repulsive. It's fine. It's—"

"Muscular and gleaming with raw beauty?"

Bubblegum looks back at Marceline: meets her gaze with cool, shameless ease. "Yes," she allows simply, and continues as the knight bristles with what might be surprise, might be pleasure, "it has merely been a trying day and my frustrations chose that moment to unexpectedly culminate in a violent outburst—"

Marceline whistles. "I hate it when that happens."

Scowling at her knight, Bubblegum huffs, "In _all _sincerity, seeing you shirtless inspired nothing in me but deep feelings of astonishment and sympathy."

"Astonishment because _wow_, look at that _physique_"—Marceline slaps the flat of her hand against her ribs; the resulting sound is like a whip's crack—"and sympathy because I couldn't look better if I tried, and it must be tough being perfect all the time, huh?"

Bubblegum gazes quietly at the other woman a moment. Padding back over to her next, she reaches to brush her fingers over the scooped scar at Marceline's hip and murmurs, "How did you manage to acquire so many of these, Marceline?"

Unnaturally cool and surprisingly soft, the other woman's skin compresses beneath her touch. Marceline's smirk dips into something else: something slow, simmering hot to make up for the chill of her flesh. "Aw, you know," she manages. "Roughhousing. Skirmishes here and there—things like that."

"Mm. Do they hurt at all?"

Folding her hand lightly over Bubblegum's, Marceline presses the princess's palm flat over the scar and offers, "You know, this one _does _twinge a bit. You could kiss it if you like." The knight's thumb rubs over Bubblegum's knuckles, pausing in the dips between them to perform idle, curious caresses. "Make it better," she finishes.

Bubblegum smiles. Touching the fingers of her free hand to her lips, she drops them then to the scar and provides, "For the knight, a kiss as requested. And tomorrow," she maintains, giving Marceline's hip a squeeze, "_armor _for you as well, whether you want it or not."

"As long as it's not made of candy canes or something," agrees the taller woman.

"We have a normal smithy. They should be able to accommodate your needs."

"Yeah? Okay. Good," Marceline allows.

There is a lull. It's brief and almost awkward, though again not quite: a moment wherein they hold on to one another there in the middle of Bubblegum's bedchamber, the princess studying the knight, the knight gazing quietly back.

"Stay here tonight," Bubblegum determines abruptly. She pulls her hands away—realizes what she's said. Quickly she amends, "Study the reports of the other assassinations with me, I mean. You, ah—you can share my bed later, if you like. I'll have another chamber prepared for your use tomorrow, but it's late now and I, uhm, I just—"

"Are those the reports?" interjects Marceline smoothly, tipping her head toward Bubblegum's desk and the multiple stacks of yellow parchment there.

"Y-yes. Ah. Ahem. Arranged from earliest notice to—"

"Let's get started," the knight insists, and ushers Bubblegum across the room.

* * *

Hours later, Bubblegum blinks her eyes open to the trellis of gray dawn light crawling over her ceiling. She has no memory of climbing into bed, much less of falling asleep, but she is safely ensconced in her sheets nonetheless. A quick glance beneath those sheets reveals she is also dressed in her nightgown.

"Presumptive woman," she grouches, and looks aside.

Sprawled on her back on the mattress next to Bubblegum, Marceline is asleep still, the arm nearest the princess thrown haphazardly over the monarch's waist. Her hair spreads over the pillows like an ink stain; one elongated canine, bared in a snarl at some dreamtime foe, winks ivory in daybreak's faint glow. Her lashes feather soft over her cobalt cheeks.

Bubblegum's first thought is that Marceline is quite pretty. Her second thought is that Marceline is quite still.

Too still.

Bubblegum's third thought is that Marceline is not breathing.


	12. XI

**TOWER, TOWER - [Part XI]**

* * *

In a moment that spans eternity, Bubblegum stares at the rumpled wraps that cloister Marceline's chest and waits for them to shift: waits for the ribcage beneath them to expand, shiver, and compress again. No such thing happens. The wraps are fixed—Marceline is inert. Lifeless.

Without a word, sound, or respiration of her own, Bubblegum leans across her bedmate and positions her cheek over the knight's slack face. She counts to ten, to fifteen, to twenty—a full minute. Two. No whisper of breath tickles her jaw. No sound meets her ear.

Horrified, Bubblegum reaches to clutch her hands about Marceline's cheeks. Her knight's skin is cold, reminiscent of Lemongrab's listless chill the night before. "No," she whispers. "No, oh please—not you too, _please_, I can't—"

Marceline's eyes flutter open. She blinks at the princess—smiles blearily too, lifting a hand to lace it over one of Bubblegum's. "Hey baby," she husks. She delves her cheek deeper into the princess's palm; her fang catches at the web of skin between Bubblegum's thumb and forefinger as she yawns. Bumping her cold nosetip against the startled crook of Bubblegum's pinky, she murmurs, "Just couldn't help touching me, huh? You found it impossible to resist my magnetis—"

"You were dead," Bubblegum croaks. The tears and sorrow that were threatening not seconds before lodge in her throat now, a thick lump of utter confusion. She inhales weakly; her chest jumps and her fingers tighten over Marceline's face, leaving white dimples in the flesh. "You were dead," she repeats. "You weren't breathing—you—" A notion strikes and she drags the hand Marceline's not holding down the knight's chin: across her throat, her collar. She flares it in the shallow dip between Marceline's breasts.

A magenta flush curls its wings over Marceline's face. She props herself up on her elbow, dark spires of her hair falling in a curtain across her shoulder's curve. "Little to the left, Princess," she suggests. "Or hey, the right's good too. I'm not picky. You'll want to squeeze—"

"You're _still _not breathing!" Bubblegum almost shrieks this. "Why aren't you breathing? What's—"

She cuts herself off because Marceline is looking at her intently, resignedly, looking at her with eyes shining sanguine in the rising dawn, looking at her with _expectation_. After a brief moment of what might be consideration, the knight opens her mouth and runs her tongue—it _is _forked—a time apiece down each of her canines, taking care to polish the tips.

The idle, bloody thought that has been drifting in the back of Bubblegum's mind since meeting Marceline the previous night twitches to the fore. "No," she maintains.

"C'mon," Marceline says. Leaning up into the princess, she grates her eyeteeth over Bubblegum's nose: clicks them. "Seriously? You're in denial?"

Sucking in a shuddering breath, Bubblegum eases back, releasing her knight. Her spine was beginning to scream for the angle. "Let me parse this out," she insists.

Marceline grins. Giving Bubblegum's knuckles a squeeze as they slide away, she folds her elbow to recline again on the princess's pillow and shrugs. "Go for it."

"Sharp teeth," starts the princess. Little by little the gooseflesh on her body recedes. "Blue skin. _Cold_ skin, come to think. No breathing necessary." Bubblegum says these things shamelessly: ticks them off on her fingers too. Glancing aside at Marceline, she attempts, "You can fly."

"Uh-huh," the knight agrees. She rolls onto her side—smushes her face into Bubblegum's hip. The princess feels her smirk.

"You are _incorrigible_." Frowning, Bubblegum scoots back a bit. "That's not part of my list—it's just a fact." Her eyes flit across the room, pinning the massive axe leaning nearby the door. "Strength," she adds. "Superior strength. The way you lifted your axe in the gorge—and Lemongrab too, last night… that isn't average."

"Nothing about me is average," confirms Marceline, stretching. Her body bends off the mattress in a U—the scars on her abdomen draw taut, glyphs of clumped, shining skin.

Watching them, Bubblegum adjoins absently, "You've survived severe trauma on multiple occasions." She closes her eyes: presses the heels of her hands to her cheeks, scraping them down her face. "You've lived over five hundred years. I remember you saying so and it's not _possible_, you can't be what I think you are, you _can't_—"

"Sure about that, Princess?" Marceline's voice drifts up from somewhere amidst the pillows, lazy.

"Vampires are just creatures made up in stories," Bubblegum dismisses. "Literary devices invented to coax children to sleep, like ghosts and humans and—"

"—knights from kingdoms where there are shadows but stars to go with them?" Marceline's knee, cool but not unpleasantly so, touches Bubblegum's thigh beneath the bedsheet.

_Untouched by time. Forever_. Peppermint Butler's words echo to Bubblegum from the memories of her childhood. The pieces of her puzzle fit together more perfectly than she could want. But—

"Vampires are monsters, Marceline," Bubblegum contends quietly. She remembers how Marceline pulled back her hair as she retched hours prior—remembers the cautious press of the other woman's touch. The soft shiver of her kiss in the gorge. She finishes, "You are not a monster."

The mattress bobs as Marceline sits up. Without comment she reaches for Bubblegum's hand: rolls it between her fingers such that it's palm up. Looking up to catch the monarch's eyes, she smiles, drops her head. Sinks her fangs delicately into Bubblegum's wrist.

It's painless, the bite, but cold. Numb needles encase the princess's arm as all the color in the limb ripples down to Marceline's mouth, the flesh left marbled and gray for its absence. Presumably Marceline drinks it. Her throat moves as she swallows.

Before Bubblegum can think to jerk away Marceline pulls back, sealing the twin holes in the smaller woman's wrist with a slick swipe of her tongue. "Not a monster, huh?" The question rumbles from somewhere deep in the knight's chest. She asks again, "Sure about that, Princess?"


	13. XII

**TOWER, TOWER - [Part XII]**

* * *

Bubblegum tries to move the fingers of her bitten arm. They twitch faintly: her thumb trembles. Her palm creases and a small spot of color reappears at its center, a prick of pink in a wash of gray. Like an inkblot it spreads, uneven but encompassing, and Bubblegum stares at it and says, "If you've just made me allergic to garlic, Marceline, you are absolutely _fired_. I am far too fond of it to give it up for mere immortality."

Marceline blinks, expression almost inscrutable—but Bubblegum thinks she might be surprised. Unable to suppress a feeling of smugness about this, the princess tries again to flex her hand. She does a little better this time, the fingers furling into a wobbly fist before going rubbery and loose once more. Seeds of pigment pearl between her knuckles.

"Uh," the knight attempts. "Yeah, well… vampires aren't actually allergic to garlic." Marceline frowns thoughtfully. "Or _I'm _not, anyway. I'll bet that's just a stupid myth."

"Really?" With her free hand Bubblegum prods the sealed bitemarks on her wrist. There is no twinge, no weakness in the flesh: just those two circular dots, dark for the otherwise pale pallor of her flesh. "And will I become a vampire, since you've chosen to gnaw on me? Without"—she tips a glare at her knight, a real one—"my permission?"

Marceline shrugs. She doesn't even have the decency to look abashed and Bubblegum's ire kindles because of it, a slow, heated spark coiling low in her belly. "No. You don't turn unless I want you to," the knight answers. "Besides that, you're kinda made of sugar, aren't you?"

"Fortuitously enough." The first vestiges of sensation creep back into Bubblegum's arm, high up in her elbow's crook. Massaging the spot in an effort to coax it to expand, she ventures next, "Sunlight?"

"Hm?"

"You're not allergic to garlic as the stories claim, but does sunlight hurt you?" asks the princess.

Somewhere in the castle a door clicks. Faint footsteps echo up the staircase—perhaps a servant scuttling to prepare the day's breakfast. _Tup-tup-tup-tup_.

After those footsteps have faded, Marceline sighs and slips from the bed. She drifts rather than walks over to Bubblegum's window, reaches for the pull, and draws the curtain open. Dawn's wispy glow falls over the room like a net, the coral hue of it washing the tall woman's skin lavender. Marceline closes her eyes. She turns her face up into the light and her lashes cast stippled shadows down her cheeks.

Nothing happens for a moment, and Bubblegum is starting to think nothing will when there's a dim change on her knight's face. Marceline's brow creases. Her lips tighten, part: she exhales and a thin tendril of smoke winds from her mouth. Two more slender plumes rise from her nostrils not seconds later, giving her a dragon's appearance, and dark, discolored patches erupt over her skin as she coughs, wobbles, drops to her feet first and her knees next before the window. The stench of burning hair boils across the bedchamber.

Marceline's hand, charring black, gropes for and seizes the pull. Said pull sticks.

Bubblegum cries out—loudly, wordlessly—and leaps from the tangle of her sheets. In two bounds she's at Marceline's side: past the knight in three, yanking at the curtain to close it again. The pull clacks disagreeably and there's a noise from Marceline then, a soft horrific _ksssshk _that is the knight's flesh bubbling on the bone where the sunlight touches it.

The door to the bedchamber rattles, slams open. Looking up, Bubblegum discovers Peppermint Butler on the threshold, not that she expected anyone else—he is the only member of her staff with a key to her room. "Peppermint!" she yelps. "Peppermint, the curtain!"

Without another word the princess turns and folds herself down over Marceline, cloaking the knight—no, the vampire, the vampire, the _vampire_—in her shadow.

Bless him, Peppermint Butler's little feet patter furiously on the bedchamber's floor as he dashes around them and to the window. He must leap to reach the cord and he dangles from it like a fish on a hook once he's seized it, squirming and shouting, "MARZIPAN, you blasted thing, move!"

And it moves. With a chagrined _skree _the curtain falls back over the window: the room plunges into half-darkness and Peppermint Butler thumps to the floor, his vest rumpled, his tunic askew. Rolling aright, he levels a stern gaze at the two women huddled before him and fumes, "_Well_! Crafting a little excitement for the castle this morning, _aren't we_?"

Bubblegum leans back to look at her knight. Her stomach convulses at the sight of the grievous burns spidering across Marceline's arms, her collar, her face. Even as she watches they begin to film over, the new skin shining and pale and frost-like in its crawl over the wounds.

A floorboard squeaks alongside her. Bubblegum glances up into Peppermint Butler's face. Despite that his expression is disapproving, he provides, "I'll go fetch some bandages and ointment, Majesty." He is gone not a moment after, his innate courtesy prompting him to even close the door behind him.

Following a moment of awkward quiet, Marceline coughs and rasps, "So, about that sunlight question—"

"Silence," Bubblegum interrupts. She tightens her arms around the vampire, the nails of her good hand biting into the cluster of the breastbindings between Marceline's shoulders. Surely it hurts the other woman, but the monarch is too angry to care. "You just listen to me now. Do you understand?"

Marceline cocks her head attentively. Her hair, Bubblegum reflects, smells _awful_.

Moments pass. Several. Finally Marceline hedges, "What am I listening to?"

"The sound of me being scared _for _you rather than _of _you," Bubblegum snarls. She turns her face into Marceline's smoldering temple. "A monster would inspire no such sentiment in me. You are my _knight_. I am your _monarch_. And this is an order, Marceline." Shaking the vampire, she insists, "_Never _do that again."


	14. XIII

**A/N: **This part is 2,500 words. =) Happy reading, lovelies.

**TOWER, TOWER - [Part XIII]**

* * *

When Peppermint Butler returns with an armful of bandages and a bowl of ointment, Bubblegum is muttering crossly into her closet as she shrugs out of her nightgown. Marceline, looking chastised, has taken up a ginger seat at the monarch's desk. Glancing between them, the servant sighs and marches over to the singed vampire. Despite that most of Marceline's wounds are all but gone now, he sets about dabbing thick white paste onto her arm and informs the knight, voice waspish, "I hope you're quite proud of yourself. She'll be in a sour mood all day thanks to you."

Hackling, Marceline protests, "It's not like I _intended _to fry myself that much, okay? You saw it—the curtain pull _stuck_—"

"The demonstration as a whole was completely and utterly _unnecessary_," Bubblegum fumes. She balls up her nightgown and hurls it at the vampire, scowling around the closet door. It slaps Marceline square in the face. "A simple affirmation or negation would have sufficed, but _no_—you had to be dramatic and hold a _cooking seminar_!" She adds a hissed, "_Ooooh!_" for good measure before whipping back to her wardrobe.

"You are quite lucky she has nothing else to fling at you," opines Peppermint Butler.

He is proven wrong when Bubblegum's underwear smacks into Marceline's cheek.

Peeling the garment free, the vampire dangles it between scorched thumb and forefinger and provides, "Well now, Princess! This is a new record even for me—we've scarcely known each other a day and you're already throwing these my wa—OW! _Hey_!" Marceline glares down at Peppermint Butler. "Did you seriously just _whip _me with that bandage?"

"I did, you fanged _hooligan_, and rest assured I will perform the task twice and again if I must!" With a fearless glower, the servant smears more ointment along the knight's other arm and leans up to snatch away Bubblegum's underwear from her too. "Tame yourself unless you'd prefer the task fall to me. I will _not_," he growls, tucking the underwear into his belt, "allow you to disrespect my princess."

Marceline opens her mouth with a reply ready, nevertheless shrinking back as Bubblegum stomps a foot to interject, "And I will not allow you to fight with him, Marceline!" She steps from the closet more or less garbed, fussing with the ribbon on her bodice's fore. "Further that," she mutters, tugging said ribbon, "I will not allow you two to fight one another either. Peppermint, you are my most loyal and trusted advisor—you have been always." She folds a hand over the butler's brow. "Marceline," the princess murmurs, gazing intently next at the vampire, "you are my protector now and stand high in my regard as such. It is _imperative _you two cooperate. And it would be _nice_," she stresses, "if you could also be civil to each other."

She looks expectantly between the pair. Following a moment's sullen silence, Marceline sighs and grumbles, "Yeah, uh. Mr. Peppermint. I like your, uhm… your thing." She wiggles a finger over the divot of her own collarbone. "You know. The little twist."

The butler blinks. His face floods with startled pleasure. "Why, this?" He tweaks the queer little knot at his vest's head, unintentionally smearing it with ointment. "They call it a bowtie! It's a trend in the Fire Kingdom, I've heard—probably next month no one will remember it, but an acquaintance of mine there told me of it and I thought I'd try it."

"It's classy, sir," Marceline admits. "It suits you."

Suddenly it's hard to tell where Peppermint Butler's stripes begin for the crimson staining his shell. "That's kind of you to say, Lady Knight."

"Marceline," insists the vampire. She affords the servant a wink. "You've seen me in my underthings, Mr. Peppermint. I think we're on a first-name basis now."

Much as he'd probably rather not, Peppermint Butler smiles. After wrapping the knight's forearm, he allows, "In that case, address me as the princess does." He looks at his patient askance. "Marceline."

"Honor's mine, Peppermint. Ssst—not so tight, hey?"

"My apologies." He loosens the wrap. "Is this better? Yes? Good—now." Passing Bubblegum's underwear surreptitiously back to the princess, Peppermint shifts his supplies aside and asks the knight, "I'd like to not see this happen again. Do you have suitable daywalking attire?"

Bubblegum makes an astonished noise. "You're able to discern it that easily, Peppermint? Marceline's… ethnicity?"

The vampire laughs and Peppermint Butler shrugs. "Strange as it is, it seems there is no alternative. Not terribly many kinds of people fly, much less burn so badly in the sunlight. And there _are_ those rather conspicuous marks on her neck."

"What?" The monarch leans in to look. Marceline tips her head obligingly—a shadow slithers down her throat's well and pools at its base, not quite dark enough to obscure the two faint circular scars there. Before she realizes quite what she's doing Bubblegum finds herself touching them, covering them with the tips of her index and middle fingers. Under her touch they quiver with an odd, ethereal heat, a shivery not-quite pulse, and not until Marceline swallows does Bubblegum look up into her knight's face. "I didn't see these before," she confesses, feeling foolish.

"Yeah, well." Marceline's voice has fallen to a hoarse whisper. Her cheeks are flushed too, almost purple. The bitemarks must be tender, realizes Bubblegum. She wonders fleetingly whether the new ones on her arm will be the same. "It was dark," the knight continues, "and the tunic had a high collar besides. No matter—you know now." A brush of Bubblegum's thumb across the marks sends the vampire's eyelids shuttering low. She blows her breath out through her teeth—strains forward into the princess's touch.

Inserting himself forcibly between the two women not a second later, Peppermint Butler huffs and tells Bubblegum, "Majesty, you've forgotten your stockings."

"Oh!" She checks. "Ah—so I have." Stifling a stab of surprising reluctance, Bubblegum withdraws and returns to her closet. She hears her butler tersely ask Marceline again about daywalking clothes.

"I don't have any for _this _day," Marceline disagrees. "The princess mentioned a smithy. I'll need to commission them as soon as possible for custom armor—my last set's still stuck in a dragon's molars somewhere." She waves a hand. "Most likely they have a helmet I can borrow in the meantime. That will suffice for temporary protection."

Bubblegum emerges with a set of stockings in time to see Peppermint Butler frown disapprovingly. "No disrespect meant," he offers, "but your particular vulnerability, Marceline—it's rather limiting, isn't it? It would take but for someone to knock off your helmet to grievously wound you. How do you expect to protect our kingdom during the daylight hours if the sun harms you so?"

"Peppermint!" Taking a seat on her bed's edge, Bubblegum leans down to pull on the stockings and chides her advisor, "I never said she had to be perfect!"

Marceline gifts Bubblegum a smile that does something strange to the inner workings of the princess's chest. They tighten and tremble at once, and Marceline says, "Thanks, Bonnibel, but he's right. I'm only so much use to you during the day." Abruptly she rises. For a moment she flexes her arms, testing the give and pull of the bandages there—next she returns her gaze to Bubblegum. "But I won't be protecting your kingdom alone, so that's not a worry."

"What do you mean?" asks the monarch. "Who else—"

"You told me last night before you fell asleep that you have a militia already." Bubblegum flushes—she remembers telling Marceline no such thing. Grinning, the knight resumes, "Presumably they aren't up to par now, but mark me! After a few weeks under my tutelage, heh, they'll be the best in Ooo."

"And until then?" presses Peppermint Butler anxiously.

"Until then," Marceline supplies, "my squire will guard the castle and the princess by day when I am unable to do so myself."

The vampire steps across the room to Bubblegum's closet, where she shamelessly pilfers a purple tunic and a set of darker leggings to go with it. The tunic's revealed to be a bit short on her after she wriggles into it, exposing the start of her hip's terrible scar. Bubblegum determines quietly, "Armor _and _a wardrobe for you, perhaps. You have a squire?"

"Hmm." Wrangling the leggings up over her hips, Marceline acknowledges, "Perhaps the term _squire _is too generous. _Leech _is more apt. But"—and she tugs at the garment's hem—"he's a good leech, make no mistake. Capable. Zealous. Good with a shield—better with a sword. I've met no one else more willing to throw their whole being into a task, and trust me, Princess, I've met _lots _of people."

Peppermint Butler persists keenly, "And you think he's up to _this_ task?"

"Sure he's up to it!" Marceline's smile is all teeth. "He's on his way. I asked your Lady Rainicorn to retrieve him last night—he should arrive this evening sometime, I imagine. If they get a good headwind."

Bubblegum takes a moment to absorb this. Wondering just what else her knight got up to while she was sleeping, she queries, "Why wasn't he with you in the gorge?"

The bed bobs as Marceline drops next to her. Their shoulders rub—their knees, their ankles. "I can't teach him all he needs to know," says the vampire. "He wasn't far—in a village over the mountains east of me, apprenticing under a blacksmith. Taking lessons. Things like that."

A thousand other questions occur to the princess instantly. She prepares to ask the next when Peppermint Butler clears his throat and suggests, "Majesty? Forgive the interruption, but since Marceline has been tended and you are both dressed, perhaps it would be wise to prepare a kingdom address? Last night's panic has not entirely subsided."

Bubblegum climbs to her feet. "Indeed—I should confirm to my citizens that I am still alive. Not to mention introduce you, Marceline. Both will inspire calm, hopefully. Peppermint"—she smiles at her friend—"would you check the smithy for a helmet while I send runners to announce the address?"

"Of course, Majesty."

* * *

At noon and after a breakfast wherein Marceline sucks the color from every vaguely red object at the table, Bubblegum presents her knight to a packed town square just beyond the walls of her palace. Yellow pennants fly around the platform, commemorating her slain regent—a ribbon of the same color flutters softly in its twine about the handle of Marceline's great axe. "Never again will there be such a death as Lemongrab's," Bubblegum promises her people. "Lady Marceline is here now to protect us."

Eyes of hundreds shift toward the aforementioned lady, and to the crowd the vampire makes a short bow. She is the picture of wild, deadly elegance: her hair streams from beneath the helmet in a stormy black torrent; her hands, gloved again, rest upon the brunt of her weapon's hilt. As the entirety of the kingdom watches, she lifts one of those hands and curls it over Bubblegum's shoulder.

Thoughtlessly the princess reaches to feather her own fingers through Marceline's, realizing what she's done only when, in the midst of the crowd's cheer, her knight tweaks her thumb and whispers through the slats in her visor, "Here to protect them, yes—but especially you, Bonnibel."

* * *

The remainder of the day slips by in a rush. The blacksmith takes Marceline's measurements. Bubblegum crafts a private, personal memorial for Lemongrab at sundown, planting his seeds in the same castle garden from whence he was grown by her hand years prior. "He was my first alchemic experiment," she tells Marceline quietly, gazing down at the small plot of soil. Tears blur her vision. Scrubbing them away, she finishes, "He was flawed in many ways, yes—but a fine friend."

Evening is creeping over the land now, stretching purple fingers as shadows through the courtyard. Overhead the sky simmers a fainter mauve. "You practice alchemy?" Marceline murmurs. She pulls off her helmet, tucks it under her arm—shakes out her hair. For the second time in their short tenure together, she passes Bubblegum a handkerchief. This one's blue but sports the same spidery M on its corner as its predecessor.

"Mm? Oh—yes, I do. Thank you." Taking the cloth, Bubblegum blots at her cheeks. She glances aside and finds Marceline looking at her curiously. "What? Are you surprised?"

The night will be cold if the breeze is any indication, and it stirs Marceline's hair into rumpled spikes. The vampire smiles. "Mm. Alchemists are fairly straight-minded, usually. Fond of numbers. Equations. Puzzles." Reaching to pluck her handkerchief back from Bubblegum's fingers, Marceline steps close. She wets the cloth on her tongue: palms the monarch's chin. Gently wiping the remnant tears away, she observes, "And yet you turned to a children's book for answers."

The smooth surface of Marceline's glove crinkles against Bubblegum's cheek. Turning her face into it, the princess replies, "I am more than just an alchemist, Marceline."

"Yeah, I'm getting that vibe." The vampire leans in—tips up Bubblegum's face. They are close now, the tips of their noses nigh touching. Marceline smells of the strawberries that constitute her protector's fee. Disjointedly Bubblegum muses that she is quite fond of strawberries. "I look forward," Marceline professes, "to exploring more of you."

A shadow whips over them suddenly. Marceline jerks back and has Bubblegum behind her in a moment's measure, a hand on her axe's hilt. The precaution is unnecessary, though. Lady Rainicorn touches down at the courtyard's edge, coiling the length of her iridescent body around a belt of shrubbery to avoid disturbing the season's last fading flowers.

Her rider dismounts with a graceless thunk and hurls himself across the garden toward the princess and her knight. "Marcy!" he shrieks. His voice rings high. "Marcy, _MARCY_!"

He tackles the vampire at full speed. They go down in a tangle of limbs and laughter—Marceline rolls her axe off her arm and away just before the creature hits her, Bubblegum notes, so he's in no danger of cutting himself on it. He belts his arms shamelessly about the knight's neck, driving his round pink face into her collar. His teeth are snaggled in his mouth. A tuft of dingy straw-colored hair crowds from beneath the brim of his headwrap, that an odd-looking once-white thing with two rounded tufts on its crown. A battered bronze sword and a rucksack equally as abused jounce between his thin shoulders.

Following a brief struggle, Marceline heaves the creature from atop her, rocks aright, and thrusts him forward. He's got the bluest eyes Bubblegum's ever seen and a homespun tunic to match them, the latter so frayed at the sleeves it's a wonder it hasn't fallen off him yet. He comes up to the princess's shoulder, maybe.

"Bonnibel," Marceline attends, "I'd like you to meet my squire, Finn the Human."


	15. XIV

**TOWER, TOWER – [Part XIV]**

* * *

"Finn the _what_?" Bubblegum echoes, but the question is the mere formality of her mouth catching up with her mind. What _else _could the boy be? His skin is sunburned and chapped, too fawn for the vanilla of her people. He lacks the distinctive hunch of Ooo's canyon nomads—no gills mark his neck nor wings his shoulders. And his eyes, of course: broken bits of the sky, those, glittering with all the cheer of the long-gone summer. Legends speak of only humans having such eyes.

"Finn the Human, Majesty," he offers. His voice cracks—his cheeks go the color of raspberry jam. Chewing his lip, he tugs off his hat and sinks to one knobby knee before Bubblegum in the wilting grass. "You have my sword and my service."

"That is _incredible_!" Bubblegum breathes.

Leaves scutter across the garden. Ribboning over, Lady Rainicorn butts her brow gently against Bubblegum's shoulder—Marceline grins, and Finn looks up at the princess with wide eyes. His flush deepens, spreads until he's nearly maroon from the neck up. "Uhm," he manages, "I think those things are actually kinda, you know, standard—"

"No, no," the princess denies. After giving the Lady a gentle kiss nearby her horn's base, Bubblegum slips to Finn and drops her hands to his crown. "Not that I seek to diminish your pledge—I am honored, Sir Finn. _Honored_," she insists. The boy beams up at her and she revisits, "But in all honesty, I meant your _hair_! It's absolutely _incredible_!"

And it is, heavy curtains of flax that froth down around the boy's ears to almost his ankles. Some of it has snarled into ringlets—still more of it is tinged green at the edges, and no small measure of twigs and detritus protrude from the explosive nest like claws. Shamelessly Bubblegum digs her fingers into it. It's hefty against her palm, soft and slick—it reeks of smoke, of copper, of vigor. "Fascinating," she observes, rubbing a lock between her thumb and forefinger. It leaves behind on her flesh a dull black smear. "I had no idea humans could sweat."

Finn looks puzzled and vaguely anxious until Marceline leans in and stage-whispers, "It's okay, kid. She did it to me too. She's touchy-feely, our princess here."

"Oh!" Instantly the squire's face clears. "Awesome!" he enthuses, and arches to wrap his arms around Bubblegum's waist. His cheek, rounded still for his youth, comes to rest against her belly; he looks up at the princess through the slats of her fingers and the slant of his hair too, grinning his crooked grin. "We sweat a _lot_," he confesses. "By the _bucketload_. Do you sweat? Are you made of gum? You look like you are, or at least your _hair _does, but then again you're the first person I've ever met with pink hair and maybe everyone here has pink hair and—"

"Finn," Marceline interjects gently. "You're getting your nast on her dress."

"Dang!" realizes the boy. He flings his arms wide again, jerking back—Bubblegum almost yanks out a handful of his hair. A glance down reveals that he has indeed smudged her dress with a goodly amount of grime. "I'm sorry, Princess! I'm really sorry! I'll totally do your laundry for you! I will _whip _the filth back out of your dress! I—"

Marceline reaches around to cup her hand over Finn's mouth. He continues to mumble eagerly into her palm even as the vampire sighs, "As I said, he's _zealous_. Sometimes overly so. Just distract him with something shiny if he becomes too much for you. He'll cease and desist."

"Marcy says I have magpie tendencies," affirms the squire around his knight's thumb. He kisses the tip of that and rocks back into Marceline's knees. "I missed you," he tells her shamelessly. "You were gone a long _time_. I made you a new blade for your axe, and I brought your clothes and your whetstone and even a few of those berries you like, and can I have a puppy? Because I found a puppy. His name is—"

"Ask your princess."

"Princess?" Finn turns a liquid, pleading gaze on Bubblegum. "Can I have a puppy?"

"Ah." Blinking, Bubblegum decrees, "If you promise to care for him—yes. Yes, you _may _have a puppy."

"I _may _have a puppy," Finn smugly relays to Marceline.

"Good for you." Nudging the boy's shoulder, the knight presses, "Now make yourself useful. Show her your gratitude, squire."

Finn scrambles to his feet. Reaching to draw his sword, he thrusts it fiercely high and proclaims in his reedy, ribald voice, "To display my appreciation, Princess, I will… I will…" He looks about—notes a nightbeetle scuttling up a nearby flower's stem. Pointing his blade's tip at said beetle, he decides, "I will rid your castle of vermin!" and turns to rush from the courtyard, rucksack clanking with his every step.

Bubblegum ventures in the following silence, "Join us for dinner, Lady?"

* * *

"I confess the child is enthusiastic—he attempted to talk to me the entire journey here despite that he could not understand me," Lady Rainicorn tells the princess at the evening meal not an hour later. Sipping from a goblet of juice, she frowns and muses, "Will he really be able to protect you, though? He seems quite young."

"I have my own misgivings, Marceline," Bubblegum admits. "Finn is sweet, but—"

The door to the dining hall crashes open. In strides the subject of their discussion, covered head to toe in stringy purple entrails and viscous black blood. One of his eyes is swollen shut, the other bruised and seeping tears. He grins at the assembly as he hurls what appears to be a severed head onto the table. Bubblegum notices that the boy appears to be freshly missing another tooth.

"Princess," he tells her excitedly, "there was a _troll _in your cellar!"

Marceline looks aside at Bubblegum and murmurs, "You were saying?"

"…I withdraw my concern."


	16. XV

**TOWER, TOWER – [Part XV]**

* * *

After Marceline has disposed of the troll's head and deposited into her squire's palm its tusks—"Keep these; they're better than a bezoar for dealing with poisons," she tells the boy—Finn joins them at the table. For a few minutes he chatters animatedly with the trio of women about the castle's various unexpected infestations: there's a gingersnap ghoul in the attic, he hisses, and he intends to lure it out with promises of gumdrops and frosting.

"I'd rather not kill it," he maintains as Marceline prepares a plate for him. "It would be better to just, you know, _move _it. It's really, really old—probably it lived in the cellar before the troll chased it upstairs." Marceline nearly loses a finger in putting the plate down before him: he's on it like a wild beast, tearing great chunks from the roll, sopping them in gravy, stuffing them into his mouth. "I'll put it back there with your permission, Princess," he says, spraying crumbs. "It'll keep away the mice!"

"Aren't there also mice in the attic to fend off?" Bubblegum asks. Smiling, she passes over a napkin—ladles onto Finn's plate a blueberry treacle too.

His fingers twitch toward it instantly. Marceline snaps his knuckles with her spoon and insists, "Ah-uh. Eat the rest first, kiddo. Dessert after."

"Aww, Marcy!" Huffing toward the vampire, Finn nevertheless resumes devouring his main meal and points out to the princess through a mouthful of potatoes, "The ghoul's already chased off the pests in the attic, Majesty, and new mice would have to go through the cellar to get up there again."

"I see," Bubblegum observes gravely. "In that case, yes—please do move the ghoul if you can. I greatly appreciate your efforts, Sir Finn."

Red under the white bower of his strange hat, the boy nibbles at his napkin and dismisses sheepishly, "Aw geez, I'm not really a _sir _yet." But his delighted grin begs Bubblegum not to correct herself, and therefore she pretends to be more interested in her meal than offering a reply.

About five minutes later and halfway through his plate, the boy slumps forward across the table. His knuckles knock aside a goblet that Marceline catches before it spills too much; his cheek plops into his treacle. A blue geyser of juice arcs over the table and Bubblegum leaps to her feet, her heart crowding up into her throat. "Is he all right?" she demands. "Is he wounded? What's wrong with—"

"Ssssh," Marceline murmurs. Gently she reaches to ease Finn's head from his dinner, though not before he manages to snore into the remnants of his plate's gravy. Palming her squire's temple, the knight props him carefully upright and urges, "Another napkin?"

Bubblegum provides one. Wiping the smeared food from Finn's cheek and hat as well as she can, Marceline next shifts from her chair to lift the boy completely. As with her axe the motion is effortless, fluid—his chin lolls into her collar's hollow and she grins at the other two members of the dinner party. "He plays hard. Works harder," she insists, voice a notch above a whisper now. "Don't stop eating. I'll be back soon."

The vampire spins midair and drifts from the room. After a short pause, Bubblegum glances at her remaining friend and offers keenly, "I think I'll be back soon too, Lady. Do you mind?"

With a buoyant chuckle the unicorn demurs, "Never let it be said I stood in the way of your curiosity. Go spy on your knight."

Biting her lip, Bubblegum hesitates. "Is it really spying?"

"Would it stop you if I said yes?" Lady Rainicorn gives her princess a knowing look.

"…no. No, I suppose it wouldn't." And with that, Bubblegum snatches the smushed treacle from Finn's plate, wraps it, and trails Marceline.

Up the stairs and down again past her own bedchamber she hurries, dancing from the edges of the runner carpet and back once more in her stocking feet. She has no need to tiptoe or creep—she's walked these halls since childhood and knows every floorboard apt to squeak, every rug prone to slip. When she reaches the quarters assigned to her knight, she curls her fingers around the jamb—the door is mercifully ajar—and leans to peer inside.

She has arrived in time to see Marceline ladle the comatose squire into the fresh sheets of what was intended to be the knight's personal bed. As Bubblegum watches, the vampire unbuttons Finn's tunic, peels it off one arm at a time—kneels at the bedside to unlace and remove the boy's shoes. Off come his breeches, his hat, his rucksack. From the last Marceline unearths a yellow, tubular wiggling thing that she drops into the bedclothes beside Finn. Amidst a cluster of faint grunting noises, it curls up and presumably goes back to sleep in the squire's elbow.

These are all things done with expressionless, perfunctory efficiency. Gathering the soiled clothes, Marceline carries them into her chamber's latrine: returns with a basin of water and a cloth. She washes Finn's face, mopping free the blood, the grime there—scrubs his feet too. His knees. Only his hair she leaves, perhaps because there's too much of it to wash without waking him.

The water in the basin is coffee-colored when Marceline finishes, the moonlight from the nearby window splashing in thick pewter curls across Finn's lax face. Drawing the curtain partway, the vampire pauses at his bedside—gazes down at him. Bubblegum thinks maybe she's smiling, but for the chamber's gloom it's hard to tell.

Bending slowly over Finn, Marceline pushes back his grubby bangs with her palm's heel. Her lips twitch; her arm curls around the boy's shoulder. She drops her head and Finn's chin lists bonelessly sideways. Marceline's fangs shine in the moon's glow like needles, like knives and Bubblegum sucks in a breath—

Brushing her mouth to his brow, Marceline squeezes her eyes shut, shivers, and hugs the boy close.


	17. XVI

**TOWER, TOWER – [Part XVI]**

* * *

Bubblegum whips away from the door and presses her shoulders back against the adjoining wall nearby its hinges, her cheeks hot and guilt nevertheless crawling up her throat like a cold, many-legged insect. She has the distinct idea she's just seen something uncomfortably personal and private to her knight, and she is allowed exactly four seconds to grapple with her shame before Marceline emerges from the chamber. Glancing down the corridor, the vampire spots the princess. The faint air of contentment about her fades in an instant and she stiffens, hands tightening into fists, face bruising the color of harassed eggplants from the bridge of her nose to the tips of her narrow, tapering ears.

For a moment they stare at each other, and the hallway is still but for the waterfall rush of Bubblegum's pulse in her neck.

"How long were you there?" asks Marceline at last, flicking her eyes aside.

"I just, uhm. Came to leave him this treacle and," Bubblegum attempts, mortified, "I… I am _so _sorry, I didn't mean to—" But she _did _mean to follow the knight and she is a terrible liar, and Marceline's lips curl into a smile a little too frail to be forgiving. "I'm sorry," Bubblegum revisits. "I am. I am _deeply _sorry, Marceline. For… intruding."

The vampire offers a tense shrug. "Hey, you know. It's your castle. You can go anywhere you like—"

"My behavior was inexcusable," Bubblegum determines fiercely. Stepping across the separation between them to thrust the wrapped treacle into Marceline's hands, she insists a final time, "I am _terribly _sorry," and strides past her knight down the hallway.

Three paces later, Marceline sighs. A soft thump denotes her landing on the corridor's runner carpet. Her shoulder jostles Bubblegum's next as she falls into step beside the princess. "I guess I can't condemn you for curiosity, Bonnibel," she murmurs, and adds, "you nosy little chit."

Bubblegum chances a glance sideways at the other woman. Marceline is smiling again—honestly this time, the peak of a single fang visible in a pucker against the fleshy round of her lower lip. "I suppose I deserve that."

"I suppose you do." Gently their elbows rub. Marceline hooks her arm through Bubblegum's, tracing her fingers down the opposing wrist and into pink well of the princess's palm. In her other hand she keeps the wrapped treacle still, tossing it high and catching it again without looking at it. Certainly it will be misshapen beyond all recognition by the time it makes it to Finn. Not that Bubblegum thinks he'll mind.

They meander in almost-companionable quiet past painted portraits of the Candy Kingdom's former royalty, pausing finally before a twin set of the alchemists who constructed Bubblegum herself. "Your parents?" asks Marceline, tipping her head toward them.

Bubblegum smiles and reaches to ghost her free hand over the face of the woman in the leftmost portrait. "As good as, indeed."

Marceline looks at them thoughtfully. "They were good to you?"

Surprised by the question, the princess blinks and agrees, "Very. I remember precious little of them—they died in my first decade."

"And this is your…?"

"My fifth will be spent next summer." Bubblegum maintains, "But they were kind. Sometimes they took me to the meadows west of the castle. They—they helped me catch butterflies there, I think."

Marceline chuckles. "Ah, butterflies. I tried to eat them when I was a kid. Trust me, Princess—they taste _awful_." But the vampire's grin dulls and she mutters, glancing toward the monarch and away from the paintings, "He wasn't that lucky."

"Mm?"

"Finn," Marceline clarifies. "Finn wasn't that lucky. He didn't have anyone to do things like that with him." Little by little the other woman's fingers descend, and before Bubblegum can think to stop them they've furled through her own, making soft, slender knots between her knuckles. She's holding hands with her knight. Pressing the pad of her thumb into the crescent of the princess's forefinger, Marceline continues, "I found him abandoned on a mountainside in midwinter. He was frostbitten—lost one of his toes later, actually. An hour more and he'd have been dead." Her mouth twitches. "He wasn't wearing anything but that stupid little hat of his."

Wordless in her horror, Bubblegum stares at Marceline. The vampire's fingers are tightening in their grasp on hers, but she doesn't think to say anything—not yet. "How old was he?"

"I dunno. Humans, hey—they're short-lived creatures. They age funny. But…" Marceline closes her eyes: bares her teeth, all of them so shining slick and sharp that Bubblegum swallows. "He couldn't walk far. He sorta, you know. Toddled. When he got better, I mean. He was sick for a long time after I found him and that was probably my fault, because I didn't know what he was supposed to eat or how vulnerable he was to everything, and some nights he'd just cry and cry and I couldn't help him and—"

Bubblegum squeezes her knight's hand. Brow twitching, the vampire chokes off the rest of whatever she intended to say and scowls for a moment at nothing. When she speaks again, her voice is almost a growl. "I wasn't the best thing for him. I… I tried to leave him places. Villages. Towns. Every time he'd follow me, and damn if he wouldn't find me too. Eventually. Sometimes it took him months but geez, he doesn't know when to quit, much less _how _to quit, and he'd always show up at my fire all bruised and bloody and _so _happy to see me." She motions helplessly, her hair rising in thick, agitated thorns. "So finally I just stopped trying to get away from him. It's stupid, Bonnibel," she finishes, suddenly and severely. "It's so, so stupid for me to let him close and I _know _that, but I couldn't help it, okay? I _couldn't_. So don't you _dare _judge me."

The vampire huffs and glares sidelong at Bubblegum through her lashes.

After a brief interlude of startled silence, Bubblegum lifts the knot of their hands to her mouth. Kissing Marceline's cool wrist, she admits, "I wouldn't dream of it." As color sweeps over the vampire's face in a tidal wash of purple, the princess tacks on gently, "I can't condemn you for being soft-hearted."


	18. XVII

**A/N: **1,500 words. This is the part wherein I'll probably lose readers, but if you didn't see it coming, hey, might wanna tip up that blindfold. =)

**TOWER, TOWER - [Part XVII]**

* * *

They return to dinner together. Evening deepens and plates are cleaned—Marceline entertains the princess and her cohort by draining dry anything Lady Rainicorn transmutes red, including a fork, a seating bench, and a curtain with its hooks still attached. Eventually the unicorn takes her leave, though, and as servants clear away the table the princess retires to her bedchamber too, her knight in quiet tow. The windows along the corridor are teeming with stars; as yet unattended by the night staff, the torches in the wall sconces gutter low. Marceline's shadow stretches tall alongside Bubblegum's in the sooty orange light.

Once back in the bedchamber, Bubblegum takes the desk and Marceline the window. The latter straightens her legs out along the ledge beneath the panes and rolls her axe into her lap. For a good while there is little sound but the discreet _ssshk _of the vampire's newly acquired whetstone gliding down the blade's enormous curve: the softer accompanying rustle of Bubblegum's papers, the scratch of her quill. A blanket of calm, thorough quiet descends on the castle.

"I'm not accustomed to company this late," admits the princess somewhere between treaties.

Halfway down the axe Marceline's whetstone pauses. Bubblegum watches it from the corner of her eye. "Is that your overly polite way of saying you want me to leave?" the vampire asks.

Hiding a smile in her sleeve, Bubblegum denies, "No. It was merely a lead-in to a conversation, provided you'd like to have one. If you'd rather not," she maintains, "that's fine too. I'm content with this." Turning slightly in her chair, she motions between them.

Marceline cocks her head and grins. The moon rises in the window above her ear like a coin washed white, its glow pale and ethereal on the axe's sharpening swell. "Yeah? Not tired of me yet?" She moves the whetstone again. A single cobalt spark leaps from between it and the blade, smoldering into a smudge on the knight's knee.

"Quite the contrary." Bubblegum tucks her quill back into its well for more ink. "As a storybook figure you were intriguing." The quill clinks against the well's rim. "In reality you are more than that. You are _fascinating_. And, if I may say so," she adds, turning her gaze back to her parchment, "you are also unexpectedly personable."

"Oho, is that so?" _Sssshk_. "You thought I'd be a jerk?"

"Mn, no." The quill blubbers, drips. Scowling, Bubblegum blots at its mess. "But admittedly I didn't foresee our apparent rapport."

_Ssssshk_. "So you thought we'd fight." It's not quite a question. Marceline's brow wrinkles a bit in her curiosity.

"I _knew _this quill was trouble." Bubblegum's efforts are futile. The parchment is ruined. With a sigh the princess crumples it and tosses it into her wastebasket. "And again, no. I didn't so much think we'd fight as I thought you wouldn't like me," she confesses.

The candle at the corner of her desk flickers, and Marceline's whetstone slows to a halt a second time. The vampire ventures, frowning now, "Say what?"

"I didn't," Bubblegum repeats, "think you'd like me." She starts in with the quill anew on another bit of parchment.

"Aw c'mon, Princess," groans Marceline, knocking her temple to the windowpanes. "You told me your kingdom was in peril. You didn't say a _thing_ about having deep-seated self-esteem issues yourself."

At this Bubblegum can't help but laugh. "My self-esteem is _just _fine, thank you _so _much for your concern! I am"—and she performs a flourish with her quill, unwittingly spattering ink across her desk's surface—"_perfectly _well-adjusted and stable."

Marceline makes a face. "Good." Jabbing her axe once at the monarch, she offers, "Because I wouldn't know how to fix that sort of thing anyway. I'm a knight. _Not _a therapist."

Solemnly Bubblegum nods. "Duly noted. Rest assured that should I ever require mental rehabilitation of any kind, I will seek other sources of aid."

"Good." _Sssshk_. With particular vehemence Marceline grinds the whetstone into the blade, showering the carpet with a fresh spray of sparks. After she snuffs out the few that threaten to smolder, she hedges, "Uh. Not that I'm trying to imply you can't, you know, talk to me about stuff. Because you can." She contends firmly, "I'll listen. And if something's bothering you, I promise I'll do my best to kill it for you."

Startling warmth flowers in Bubblegum's chest at the assertion—enough to make her curl her toes in her slippers. Never, she realizes with fleeting resignation and amusement mixed, has the vow of violence inspired in her such positive emotion. "I'll keep that in mind."

"Yeah." _Sssshk. _"Do that."

A measure of what just might be shy quiet unfurls in the space between them. Bubblegum's candle burns down its wick for an hour's quarter. Somewhere out in the kingdom a flock of nightgeese take wing, honking; from the lower corridors echo the occasional squeaks of a housekeeper's cart.

"So," Marceline asks finally amidst the briefest pause between scrapes of the grinder. "Why did you think I wouldn't like you?"

"It's not obvious?"

"Don't think I'd be asking if it was."

"Hm. Fair enough." Bubblegum lifts her parchment and flutters it gently, hoping to dry it. "You're a hero, Marceline—a fierce, mysterious warrior strong enough to protect a kingdom. To bear unto your monarchs the hearts of dragons, sometimes still beating." Marceline smirks and the princess resumes, "You've seen things I haven't—been places I will never go." She looks at her knight over the crease in her elbow. "Why would you be at all inclined to like me? Compared to you, I'm not interesting in the least."

"You don't have to be interesting to be likable, sheesh," mutters Marceline. Rolling her axe aside against her bicep, she shrugs; glances back at the princess. "But hey, don't sell yourself short. You _are _interesting. If I didn't think so I wouldn't be here."

"No?"

"Nope." Marceline taps her thumb to the axe's blade, nods in satisfaction—leans the weapon into the ledge. She laces her fingers next and folds them behind her head, angling her face to gaze out the window. By the moonlight Bubblegum can count her lashes. "Maybe you haven't fought any dragons," muses the knight, "but you stood up to me. _That's _interesting."

"And a lot scarier than a dragon?" teases the princess, taking turns looking between her treaty and her companion.

"Ten freaking _times _scarier than a dragon," agrees Marceline. "They just breathe fire. Man, you don't wanna see _me _when I get mad. I make brimstone look bookish."

The vampire gifts Bubblegum a wink and the warmth the monarch experienced earlier returns in a rush, tightening her chest, making her palms itch. Her cheeks feel hotter than they should, given the banked embers in the brazier nearby. "Marceline?" she tries.

"Ah?"

Bubblegum hesitates: posits hopefully next, though, "Understandably you aren't willing to be a therapist, but… perhaps a friend?" She clarifies, "Mine?"

A breeze gives the panes of the window a ginger rattle, and slowly the other woman unhooks her fingers. She tilts her head—not quite toward Bubblegum but not away either. "A friend's not the same thing as a knight, Bonnibel," she murmurs. A grin hovers in the shadow of her mouth's sharpness. "Sure you want both from me?"

"Is there a particularly marked difference between the two?"

"Yeah, I'd say there is. That thing you mentioned earlier—our _rapport_." She drawls the word—lifts a hand to pull the curtain closed too, strangely enough, shutting out the moon and the pleasant speckle-shine of the stars. "That would change."

"How?"

"Well, knights and their princesses… typically they have a civil, professional relationship. An arm's length kind of understanding. But friends…"

In Bubblegum's peripheral vision there is a flutter of movement. She checks it and Marceline's face is a handspan from her own—suddenly, soundlessly. The vampire lifts her fingers to her lips, wets them, darts them aside: closes them over the wick of the candle on Bubblegum's desk.

_Ssst_. The meager blue flame dies. The room snaps into blackness and Bubblegum stabs her quill's nib down through her parchment, surely ruining it as superbly as she did its predecessor. Her wrist jerks, jostles the inkwell. Her tiara slides in the slot behind her ear as Marceline's hand feathers over her jaw, nigh disembodied in the dimness.

"Friends," husks her knight, "are a _bit_ closer." The lashes Bubblegum counted earlier flicker fair against her cheek. "You okay with that, Princess?"

The coals in the brazier slip, snicker. Marceline's eyes burn ruddy holes in the gloom and Bubblegum asks, "How close?" Her palms are slick, her fingers crooking into knots. She drops her quill without realization, without care.

On her face Marceline's hand curls. "Just a _little_ more," she admits, "if you want. Milady."

There is no malice, no teasing, no coercion: nothing but the shameless wink of red in the dark and the slow slide of the knight's fingers too, tracing soft down Bubblegum's throat.

Leaning tentatively into the cool star of that touch, the princess tips her head up and brushes her mouth to Marceline's.


	19. XVIII

**TOWER, TOWER - [Part XVIII]**

* * *

As it turns out, kissing a vampire in the dark is not Bubblegum's brightest idea.

Marceline's fangs catch on her lower lip, singing sharp over the plump round of flesh—the other woman's nose jabs painfully into her cheek. Her tiara spears Marceline's forehead and the knight hisses into her mouth, halfway to laughing.

"Whoa," she demands. Her hand falls to furl over Bubblegum's shoulder. Somewhere off to the right her fingers snap: the candle's flame on the desk's edge rekindles, resurrected, and in the frail, flickering circle of light it produces Bubblegum can see Marceline smiling. "You're pretty much scraping off my eyebrow, Bonnibel. Hold it a sec."

"Yes. My apologies," agrees the princess. She leans back a little, touching her fingertips gingerly to her mouth. "That was perhaps not the wisest course of action on my part." She winces. "Ow. Am I bleeding?"

"Hm. Tip your head up a bit—lemme see." Palming the monarch's chin, the vampire angles it aloft and checks. She acknowledges, "Yeah, you are. Just a bit." Her thumb swipes over Bubblegum's apparent wound. It throbs dully and the princess flinches. "It's not bad," Marceline observes. "But I bet it stings, huh? Here, let me just…"

Marceline leans in: closes her mouth delicately over Bubblegum's lip. There is a gentle feeling of suction, of cool pressure. Bubblegum shivers—the pain of the wound fades and Marceline grins, turning her head to muffle a chuckle into the crease of the princess's cheek.

"What?" sulks Bubblegum. Absently she lifts a hand and curls it in Marceline's hair. The dark locks are slippery and coarse under her palm. Wild. Springy. "Are you _laughing _at me, Marceline?"

The chuckle blooms into a cackle. "No one's ever impaled themselves on my _teeth_ before!"

"Oh, so you do this _often_, do you?" Bubblegum yanks her handful of her knight's unruly mane.

"More often than you do, obviously." Rearing back a little, the vampire smirks at Bubblegum and nudges her head more insistently into the smaller woman's touch. "Or are you just into the rougher stuff?"

Heat explodes over Bubblegum's face as she nevertheless tightens her hold on Marceline. "That is a _repugnant _implication, you _fiend_—"

"Fiend yourself, Princess." Clothing rustles and Marceline eases down, sinking to one knee before the princess. Bracing her elbows on Bubblegum's knees, she props her chin in her hands and ventures, "_Have _you kissed anyone before? C'mon, Bonnibel. Dish."

Bubblegum is terribly glad she's not made of frosting like some of her citizenry—she'd have melted by now, she's positive. Slanting her eyes closed, she sucks in a calming breath and confesses, "It's not a ritual I've engaged in very frequently."

"So that's a no?"

"…that," the princess affirms at length, "is a no."

"You've been around _fifty years _and you've never freaking kissed anyone?" Her knight sounds appalled. "Geez! _Why_?"

Choosing to ignore the question, Bubblegum demands, "Well what about _you_, hm?" Leaving off her grip of Marceline so she may fold her arms, she scowls down at the vampire. "I suppose you've made it a regular habit, then?"

Marceline gives Bubblegum's knee a squeeze through the fabric of her dress. "Kissing? Sheez… I wouldn't call it a _regular _habit, but I'm not gonna say I haven't indulged either. Don't look at me like that, you giant prude"—she might just be on the verge of laughter again—"I don't just go around gnawing on the face of every monarch I serve."

Bubblegum deadpans, "Are you certain of that?"

"Listen to _you_! You jealous brat." Grinning, Marceline stretches out her arms over Bubblegum's lap, kneading her fingers into the pleats of the bodice at the princess's hip. She drops her cheek into her elbow and her hair spreads in some semblance of an inkstain across Bubblegum's legs, long enough in some places to touch the floor. Heaving a sigh, she is a quiet one moment—two. And then, "It's been a long time. About a century, I guess. And for your information, that guy wasn't a monarch. He was a wizard." Bubblegum feels Marceline's lips pull back in a sneer. "A wizard and a swine."

Despite that she's embarrassed still and prickly too over being teased, Bubblegum softens. Slowly she flattens her palms in Marceline's hair, drawing her fingers through the dark, thick tresses. Recalcitrant as it looks, it's soft and surprisingly pliable, catching colors from the candle to quiver in quick flickers of iridescence, all whickering greens and purples and sheer, shimmery blues. "I'm sorry," the princess murmurs.

"Eh." The vampire huffs into a wrinkle of her dress, shrugging. "No bother now." Rolling her eyes up to look at Bubblegum through her lashes, she nudges again, "Why haven't you ever kissed anyone, Princess? You can't tell me I'm the first person you've ever wanted to, y'know, make out with." The vampire's eyebrows perform an intricate wiggle.

"You are quite possibly the crudest individual I've ever met."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

"You would." Discovering Marceline's pointed eartip in the sea of her hair, Bubblegum tweaks it curiously. She allows after a thoughtful pause, "Previously I did not gather that the other parties involved were wholly receptive to the idea of kissing me, so I refrained."

"…you chickened out."

"I," corrects Bubblegum, "was _polite_."

Marceline provides a theatrical moan. Rocking back on her heels next, she bobs to her feet and seizes Bubblegum's hands. "Up," she insists, tugging them. "C'mon, Bonni."

Obediently the princess rises. Marceline wastes no time in guiding the monarch's arms about her narrow hips—in pulling her close. They meet from ribs to belly; the shallow swell of Marceline's breasts hits gently at Bubblegum's collar. Plucking free the other woman's tiara, the vampire tosses it back onto the desk and determines, "Okay. Now the stupid stabby thing's gone." She enfolds Bubblegum in the crook of her elbows—flutters her eyelashes. "Look, see? I'm receptive." She finishes, "Gimme a kiss. And _please_, feel free to be impolite about it."


	20. XIX

**TOWER, TOWER - [Part XIX]**

* * *

Over the course of the past two days, Princess Bubblegum has managed to deal with the deaths of both her close ally and a longtime friend. She has realized, accepted, and taken measures to circumvent the high potential of her own demise. In the face of skepticism she has traveled across Ooo, has unearthed and procured a legendary knight to defend her kindgom: has offered her neck to the blade of an axe and come out of the encounter with her head still attached. She has experienced a vampire in her bed—has been bitten by that vampire not once but twice now. She has moved to embrace in the dark what most children's storybooks call a demon.

There is no absence of courage in Bubblegum—no lack of verve.

So _theoretically_, the princess muses as she gazes up into Marceline's expectant face, a tiny little kiss should be effortless.

She finds herself unable to move even so. Her fingers are frozen, crooked into claws just above the small of the other woman's back; her breath sticks in her throat and words clog there with it, thick, syrupy. The throb of her heart in her chest is almost painful. Consideration stalls her actions—thought gives her pause.

A moment, slow, unwinds between them.

"Scared?" Marceline ventures finally, shattering the quiet. The candle's light tinges her eyes almost pink.

"No," Bubblegum answers, even though it feels a little like a lie. It must sound like one too, because Marceline's brow arches and her mouth twists a bit. "I'm not afraid so much as I'm second-guessing myself," amends the princess.

"Second-guessing?" Between the monarch's shoulders Marceline's hand drifts, the fingertips of it cool even through the fabric of Bubblegum's dress. "How do you mean?"

"I mean," Bubblegum manages, swallowing hard, "ah, why are you even letting me _do_ this, Marceline? Because this is a game and you want to see how far you can get me to go, or—or is it because you just like kissing, or—"

She trails off and looks searchingly up at the vampire, who flushes and glances sidelong. _Snick_—the other woman's teeth click in her mouth. "Uh, well—"

"Look at me," Bubblegum demands. Suddenly she has reasonable control over her hands again and she shifts them, lifting them to cup Marceline's sharp, severe cheeks. Rubbing her thumbs over the harsh arcs of those cheeks, she insists again, "_Look at me _and answer me that."

Marceline's eyes flicker back to the fore. In them there are a thousand shades of red and faint flecks of other warm colors too, autumnal yellows and oranges burning the same way the flames in a firepit might. "Do you really want me to define it?" she asks. "Does it have to be complicated?"

Bubblegum leans back a little in the circle of the vampire's arms, frowning. "Complicated?"

"Sure." Marceline shrugs, but her grip on the princess tightens and she says, "Do I have to have a specific and incredibly serious reason for this? Can't I just like you and _want _you to kiss me?"

Something about the way Marceline says this makes Bubblegum's stomach clench in a manner that's not altogether objectionable. She licks her lips. "You, ah. You—you _want_ me to kiss you?"

Closing her eyes, Marceline chuckles and turns her head to hide her face in one of Bubblegum's palms. Her cheeks are quite dark now, realizes the princess—and almost warm. Is she _embarrassed_? "Geez"—the knight mutters this—"no, I thought I'd just invite you to because you repulse me and I'm a glutton for punishment, didn't you know? _Yes_," she hisses, "I want you to kiss me. _Glob_."

"You're blushing." Though Bubblegum's never been fond of purple, the dark hue splotching down the vampire's jaw is delightful. "Marceline, you are aggressively _blushing_."

"Yeah, well, _you _try it on for size, Princess." Pulling what she must believe to be a convincing copy of Bubblegum's expression, the knight feathers her fingers delicately over the monarch's face. "Why are you letting me do this, Bonnibel? Oh!" She feigns a startled gasp. "You_ want _me to kiss you?"

Fresh shyness makes Bubblegum duck her head. "I don't sound like _that_!"

"Yes you do! You totally sound like that! And see, now you're blushing too because it's _awkward_, isn't it? Man!" Smiling despite herself, the taller woman sighs. "C'mon, Bonni. I know this might be hard for you, but take my advice, okay?" Pressing the heels of her hands into Bubblegum's cheeks, she urges, "Stop guessing. Stop _thinking. _If you want to kiss me and I've said you can, trust that we're on the same wavelength as to why it's happening and just go ahead and _do _it already."

Bubblegum asks, "_Are _we on the same wavelength, Marceline?"

They study one another in the lambent glow of the candle's flame, maybe thoughtful, maybe not. Bubblegum notices that shadows have a habit of collecting in the shallow divot between Marceline's nose and her upper lip. She wonders why. She wonders too what that spot tastes like, and Marceline smiles, and Bubblegum doesn't even have to tug on her knight's chin for the other woman to lower her head and they kiss, not one after the other but together, just like that.

It's slippery, kissing. Marceline's mouth is cool and soft and wet: careful against Bubblegum's, patient. The rasp of her fangs is gentler this time than it was the first. The princess likes it—likes the way the cautious grate of sharpness twangs down through her spine to pool in her belly, spreading warmly there. Curiously she scrapes her own teeth over Marceline's lip.

"Mmmn!" the vampire approves with a shudder. She angles her head, slants her eyes at the princess: grazes her tongue's tip hopefully over the seam of Bubblegum's mouth and nibbles it next, the press of her smile like a coal. "Let me?" she murmurs.

Bubblegum parts her lips, breathless, and Marceline slides into her.


	21. XX

**TOWER, TOWER - [Part XX]**

* * *

For all that she's read every romance novel in her castle's library at least twice, Bubblegum is certain she's never perused any tome that has explained thoroughly enough the process of kissing. Racy books have extolled in tireless tirades the meeting of lips, of teeth, of tongues—but never have they mentioned hands like Marceline's, rough palms and rougher fingertips trickling down Bubblegum's cheek and ribs apiece. Never have they mentioned the slow scrub of hips—the brush of bellies, the rasp of knees, the buzzing laughter at the back of the taller woman's throat as Bubblegum plunges her hands into her knight's riotous dark hair and clings to it, clings to her, clings to Marceline.

The vampire's fingers twist possessively through the laces of Bubblegum's bodice, her thumb nevertheless tender in its trace down the satin lattice. Against the monarch's mouth she whispers softly, almost shyly, something that sounds like, "My princess—"

There is a knock on the bedchamber door.

They jerk away from one another immediately, Bubblegum with her chest heaving, Marceline's hair fixed in a massive, thorny rictus. Their hands grope at empty air—Bubblegum's knuckles brush her knight's wrist and then Marceline is back at the window, sprawled lazily across its ledge like she never left it in the first place. As another knock sounds, this one more frenzied than its predecessor, she rolls a shoulder toward the door and asks, "You gonna get that or what, Bonnibel?" She seizes her axe and its whetstone too. Her cheeks are dark still, their color reminiscent of plums.

Bubblegum gapes at the knight. "I," she attempts. Brushing her fingers to her lips, she shivers and tries again, "Marceline, I—"

"Princess!" Peppermint Butler's voice issues from beyond the door, cracking high about its usual tenor. "Princess, are you all right?"

"Get it before he breaks it down," Marceline hisses, and adds with a grin she doesn't bother trying to hide, "hurry up, geez!"

Bubblegum smiles back and turns to half-stumble to the door. She fumbles the clasp aside, pulls it open—looks down into the nearly panicked face of her servant. "Peppermint," she greets him, "I'm sorry for the delay. I was—"

"Refugees," he interrupts. With a look of chagrined apology he goes on, "Majesty, your presence is needed downstairs. There are refugees in the atrium." Wringing his hands, the butler provides, "They are requesting an audience."

"Refugees from where?" asks Marceline before Bubblegum can formulate a response. The monarch glances over her shoulder at the vampire and finds her sitting up, the hilt of her weapon braced against her knee's inside. "How many?"

"A small contingent—ten or twelve, no more," Peppermint Butler answers. He leans around his princess to gesture fretfully to Marceline. "Most have come from the Duchy of Nuts. They've heard of you, Marceline, and your promise to protect this kingdom. Presumably they seek sanctuary here following the death of their overseer." Flicking his gaze back to Bubblegum, the advisor offers, "Majesty, they've brought the Marquis of Nuts with them."

"What?" cries Bubblegum. "You said the Duke's children were _cracked_, Peppermint—"

"He is," the small spherical man agrees weakly. Only now does Bubblegum notice how pale he is beneath his array of stripes. "The Marquis _is _cracked," the butler revisits, "and his state is terrible, Princess—he may yet succumb to his wounds. But he is here now, and conscious for the moment, and I thought you would surely agree to see him."

"At once," Bubblegum affirms. She bites her lip. "If the Marquis survived, perhaps his younger brother…?"

"Dead," Peppermint Butler reports heavily. "Regrettably, of that fact the runner was not mistaken."

For a moment the princess closes her eyes and allows herself to fume, lifting her hands to massage her temples. She understands that assassinations of royalty are often driven—inexcusably—by political zeal. But what manner of cruelty must exist in a person to move them to massacre harmless children too?

"Marceline," she murmurs. "Attend me?"

There is a ripple of presence at her elbow—the scent of jasmine. "Always, Princess," the knight acquiesces.

Opening her eyes once more, Bubblegum tells her butler, "Call for the physicians. If there is anything to be done for the Marquis, they will know."

"Yes, Majesty."

"Thank you, Peppermint." To the servant Bubblegum offers what she hopes is a grateful smile before stepping around him and out of the bedchamber. Marceline trails her a pace, not walking but drifting, the shadow of her axe stretching sharp alongside them.

Halfway down the hall, Bubblegum stops at Peppermint Butler's ginger call of, "Princess?"

She turns to blink at him. His mouth ajar, Peppermint Butler looks slowly between his monarch and Marceline. Mostly his expression is inscrutable, but the princess has known her servant since childhood. She thinks maybe there's a sketch of disapproval somewhere in the faint lines of his face.

"Perhaps you'll be wanting your crown, Majesty," he suggests.

—

A few minutes later, after Bubblegum has indeed fetched her tiara and composed herself, the monarch crosses the atrium, weaves through the huddled crowd of Nut People, and kneels at the side of their wounded nobleman. Supported by his peers in the remnant shell of his crushed armor, he is scarcely recognizable; his tiny rounded chest, fragmented down one side, shudders with every breath.

"Marquis," Bubblegum whispers to the boy. His eyes jitter to her; his mouth twitches. "Marquis," she repeats gently, ghosting her hand over his brow, "you and your people are safe now. We will protect you here."

Maybe the Marquis smiles. Bubblegum isn't sure whether it's that or a grimace of pain. "Protect?" he echoes hopefully.

Bubblegum nods. Easing aside, she beckons to her knight and maintains, "Marquis, this is Marceline. She will help—"

But the child convulses at the sight of Marceline. His eyes bulge; bloody froth flecks his lips as he cowers in the knight's looming shadow and screams, "She killed my family! _She killed my family_!"


	22. XXI

**TOWER, TOWER - [Part XXI]**

* * *

There is an immediate flurry of activity following the first tormented cries of the Marquis. The physicians who have come at Peppermint Butler's behest rush in to subdue the flailing child. Princess Bubblegum must help to cradle him as he passes chokingly from lucidity into a fit of full-blown hysteria—must pry his desperately clutching hand from hers too, watching as her staff collect him and carry him off. His reedy screams echo in the atrium long after he has been spirited down the corridors toward the infirmary: "_She killed my family! She killed my family! She killed my family!_"

When he is gone, both in body and in voice, all eyes in the room shift slowly to Marceline.

Pinned by the gazes of aggrieved pistachios, mint-chew housekeepers, banana split guards, Peppermint Butler, and the monarch of the kingdom especially, the knight blinks. She tips her head, her hair spilling down over her shoulder in a barbed, spiny cascade—folds her palm gently over the blunt head of her axe. She leans on the weapon. In the brazen torchlight her face is almost stern.

She addresses the assembly.

"It should go without saying that the boy is mistaken. I have killed no one." She pauses. Her cheek bunches under her teeth as she chews its inside, considering. Quietly she amends, "Recently."

Mutinous whispers thread through the crowd. In her periphery Bubblegum notes Peppermint Butler's small but fearsome scowl, coupled with it the anxious frowns and shivering spears of her often mild-mannered sentries. Not a single member of the Nut refugee party looks appeased by Marceline's assurance. One woman in particular, a tear-smudged cashew, spends a long, lingering moment examining the knight from top to toe. Finally she croaks, "What _are _you?" She jabs at Marceline's feet.

Every gaze in the room drops. Bubblegum's heart sinks when she—and by rote, her entire company—realizes that Marceline is not standing on the atrium's floor, but hovering over it. Across the thick tiles her shadow bobs gently.

"What are you?" repeats the cashew, her tone rising to a shriek. She stumbles backward into Bubblegum's knees. "What _are _you? Princess!" Clearly no more than a flicker from panic, the frightened Nut demands of the monarch, "What _is _she?"

It is Bubblegum's turn to receive the room's full attention and she does: suddenly everyone is looking at her, the cashew and Peppermint Butler and an almond at the fore of the Nut contingent and Marceline. Marceline, with her cautious, expectant face and her eyes red as apples, her eyes that just minutes ago were burning at Bubblegum in the darkness of her bedchamber—

The princess finds herself unable to speak.

How much time she passes in her silence Bubblegum doesn't know, but at last Marceline turns her face aside, closes her eyes, and reaches up to unbutton her tunic's high collar. Thumbing it open, she presents her pocked neck to the watching congress and suggests, "Let our princess not continue to struggle over the most politically correct term." And then, "I am a vampire."

She opens her mouth next, displaying her array of needled teeth for the room to see.

The guards rattle their spears. Horrified expressions and epithets the same ripple through the crowd. No small number of the castle staff rush for the doors, and the cashew woman drives a sharp, unwitting foot down into Bubblegum's ankle as she shrinks back from Marceline and shrieks, "A monster!"

Wrappers and shells alike jostle in the turmoil. A housekeeper faints dead away and Peppermint Butler glowers and Marceline, caught in the middle of it all, drops to the floor to stand in solid, immovable silence. She doesn't again look to Bubblegum.

"Enough," the princess forces out. Her voice cracks and she tries again, scowling across the atrium at her calamitous people, "_ENOUGH!_"

So great is the princess's gentle reputation that the sound of her shout stops the riot. Peppermint Butler wheels about to stare—the guards stiffen in surprise and even the Nut People, sensing the monarch's flare of temper, huddle together in temporary quiet.

Sweeping an arm in her knight's direction, Bubblegum determines fiercely, "Marceline is not a monster. Marceline is my champion, nothing less, and anyone who questions her also questions me. Is that _abundantly _clear to all who are assembled here now?"

For a moment there is no contest, but then a refugee hedges, "The Marquis said—"

"The Marquis," interrupts the princess, "is a child and grievously injured too. Each of those things alone can potentially skew perception—together they _certainly _do." Helping the trembling cashew woman to her feet, she continues, "Marceline is correct—it should go without saying that he is mistaken. The Duke or the Duchess did not die by Marceline's hand."

"Maybe by her axe instead, then?" ventures a stubborn walnut man.

Bubblegum glances to the knee-high aggressor. She holds his gaze sternly until he flinches and finds fascination in his feet. "We will," she murmurs, loud enough again so everyone will hear, "endeavor to find out what happened to the Duke and Duchess. In the meantime and for as long as necessary, you will find safe harbor here. Provided"—she stresses this—"you respect my rule and Marceline's guardianship. Criticism is expected. Conspiracy, however, will not be tolerated. From any source. From _anyone_."

She looks across the atrium at both the refugees and her own people. A few heads duck sheepishly. On many faces, though, there is still fear. Suspicion. Even Bubblegum finds herself thinking of Lemongrab, his peel and his stiff, stricken face and his _wounds_, left by a weapon perhaps the same size and shape as—

Forcing a smile, Bubblegum bids the room goodnight and turns to ascend the stairs again. Marceline follows.

As they turn the corner and move together down the corridor, the vampire clears her throat and begins, "Princess, listen—" From the corner of her eye Bubblegum sees Marceline reach for her.

Instinctively she twitches her hand away.


End file.
